Gavin Lyall - Midnight Plus One

For a long time there was nothing but the gentle zoom of the engine and the wind rush along the windows. Then Harvey said: 'Well, it's a good way to stay rich: count your money with glue on your fingers.'

'Mr Lovell – don't you think there might be a question of right and wrong in how the rich spend their money, as well as how the poor do?'

Harvey looked at me; I lifted an eyebrow back at him, and then fiddled the mirror to catch Maganhard's face. He was leaning forward slightly, and frowning – slightly – at the back of Harvey's neck. But I was beginning to learn that his slightness was only skin deep.

Harvey said: 'Mr M. – how the rich spend their money has never been a really pressing problem with me. I'll just say you've got a point of view there.'

Maganhard's face twitched briefly into what could have been a smile, scowl, sneer, or almost anything else. But suddenly I thought I could see, under the square solid face, the lean Scots preacher thundering cold hellfire and penny-wise salvation from the stone pulpit.

'He's got a point of view,' I growled. 'He may lose an empire, but he's got a point of view.'

After that nobody said anything much. The sky clouded over again with lumpy grey clouds that didn't look as if they were going to rain, but were just wanting to shut off the sun. The whole afternoon tasted of yesterday's beer.

Themarc wore off, leaving me feeling dull and sour, and my driving reactions slowed down; I let my driving slow down, too. Beside me, Harvey gave me an occasional new road number or direction to follow; that apart, he was slumped back staring out at the roadside winding past. Maganhard and the girl did nothing but keep some weight on the rear wheels.

Just before five o'clock we went through Condat-en-Féniers and after that we were in the real uplands. Not jagged country, not even really rough, just filed down by a million winds into sweeping slopes and low, bony ridges. The sort of country where most of what you see is sky. The only trees were clumps of pines beside the fort-like farmhouses and at crossroads, but the slopes were a vivid green and flooded with stubby little wild daffodils.

Harvey said: 'We're on aroute nationalenow – it's a pretty minor one, but-'

I said: 'Don't bother any more. I know this country.'

That should have made me feel better. Maybe it just stopped me feeling worse. I started to push the Citroen along a bit faster; the roads were almost empty, and if they weren't straight at least you could see across the bends in that open country. I drove on the accelerator and brake, in bursts up to seventy kilometres an hour on the straights.

We didn't stop. Nobody asked to and I didn't offer. If I stopped now I wouldn't want to start again.

I went north of St Flour, then by-passed Le Puy to the south; twenty minutes later we were crawling up a narrow, winding road between stone walls half sunk into the turf.

The village name-plate, knocked half out of the ground by some cart, said Dinadan. I stopped just beyond it, before the village came into view.

Harvey turned wearily in his seat and asked: 'Where are we trying? A farm?'

'No. In the village itself.'

He nodded at the roadside. 'It's got four telephone lines. It could have a gendarme, too.'

I just nodded and got out of the car and stretched. I felt as stiff as a coffin lid and creased as the paper you wrap the fish and chips in. I hoped Dinadan would be what I was looking for; I didn't feel like going any further up or down the Rat-line.

'I'll be a few minutes,' I said. I walked across the road to the uphill side, through a small gate in the stone wall, and into the village cemetery.

Dinadan was an old village, and by now the cemetery was a big place. But it didn't have any of the flavour of the village about it. Where the village was scruffy, ramshackle, narrow and winding, the graves were laid out in neat square rows, clean and well-kept. And there was a lot more variety up here than down in the village.

There were big florid tombs with a sorrowing angel holding down the lid, wrapped up in a three-sided glass house to keep the wind off the flowers, and simple rectangular slabs flat on the ground, and everything in between. But each one was well-kept and legible – and I was there for the reading matter.

It took time and it took memory. When I looked up from one inscription Miss Jarman was at my shoulder. She'd worn better on the ride than I had, but even her soft sealskin was showing creases.

'I wanted a breath of fresh air,' she said. 'I thought I'd better keep you in sight so that I wouldn't be late. D'you mind?'

I shook my head and walked on down the row. She followed.

After a while she asked: 'What are you doing?'

'Finding out what's happened in the village since I was last here.'

She gaped at me, then thought about it, then smiled and nodded.

I pointed at one tomb that wouldn't have disgraced a Florentine nobleman. 'They finally made old de Gorremairebefore he died. He'd been trying for it for thirty years, he told me.' I nodded at de Gorre and walked on, thinking that they should have planted vines instead of roses around his tomb. He'd have beenmaireyears before if anybody had been confident of finding him sober on inauguration day. Well, give the old boy time and the vines would grow naturally.

I pointed at a smaller affair in marble. 'He kept the garage; if his son's got the place now, at least we can get our number plates changed. The father was a law-abiding old bastard.'

We walked on. Finally, I found the Meliot plots and started checking carefully.

After a moment she said: 'Was he a soldier? It just sayspour la France.'

I looked at the slab she was reading off: Giles Meliot. 'Look at the date,' I said. It was in April 1944. 'He was with me: we ran into a roadblock up north of here, carrying some guns up to Lyons. He got hit; I didn't.' I hadn't seen the slab before; you weren't allowed to go putting patriotic tombs over Resistance corpses during the war. And all they'd put was 'For France'. Well, by now that was all anybody wanted to know. It was all a long time ago. And I was still running through roadblocks.

Maybe on my slab they'd write:Pour les12,000francs.

The girl had said something. I said: 'What?'

'Did the guns get through?'

'The-? Oh, yes. I got them through. I wasn't hurt.'

She seemed about to say something else, then didn't. I went on checking up on Meliot tombs.

'Well,' I said, 'with luck we'll be staying with the Meliots tonight. His parents. It looks as if they're both still around.'

I started back to the car, stopping to read the newest-looking tornbs as I went. When I got to the wall, Miss Jarman had vanished. I went down to the car; she wasn't there.

Harvey watched me climb in, but didn't say anything. His face was grey and tired, and the lines were deeper in it. He was almost burned out, but at least he was keeping the last of his energy for something more important than asking what the hell I'd been up to. And at least he'd stayed dry.

The girl hurried down out of the cemetery a few minutes later, and dived into the car. 'Sorry I'm late.'

I wasn't feeling strong enough to start asking What The Hell myself. I switched on, started up, and we rolled up round the corner of the hill into Dinadan.

It was a small, cramped place of cold slate-coloured stone that looked wintery and always would, in any weather. The houses, narrow enough to look tall, huddled shoulder-to-shoulder for warmth; at bends in the main street you could see behind them the tall skeletons of elms, not yet in leaf, against the grey evening.

Nothing much seemed to have happened to it since the war – certainly nobody had swept the roadside, or filled in the potholes or cleared away any of the stacks of logs and empty oil drums. But Dinadan had more important things to do: first survive, then get rich. Cleaning the place up came a bad third; besides, it would attract the tax inspectors.