Strange Images of Death

Chapter Eleven

‘No good, I suppose, telling you the answer to both your questions is: “I don’t know”? Thought not. And if I added: “None of your bloody business! Go away and leave me in peace, you nosy bugger …”’

Orlando got to his feet rebelliously and made for the door, to find that Joe was already blocking his way.

‘Why don’t we take a walk down to the stables, old man?’ Joe said, unruffled. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard horses somewhere in the distance. I’d like to take a look. You can always get the measure of a man by checking his horses-I’ve heard you say it. And, as the lord himself seems to be eluding me, it’s the best I can do.’ He knew that Orlando loved horses even more than art and would never raise an objection to strolling out to admire a selection. Orlando fell into step willingly enough. ‘We can get a bit of fresh air before the day heats up,’ Joe persisted cheerily. ‘If you care to burble a few confidences into a sympathetic ear as we go, I can assure you of my utter discretion. And it is my business, I’m afraid. I’ve been engaged by Dorcas to find her mother. She seems very certain that she’s to be found down here in Provence.’

Orlando sighed. ‘And that’s all the information you can count on. Why do you suppose I come down to this part of the world every summer? I’m still hoping to find her again. Laure. The love of my life. Well, the first love of my life.’

‘Laure?’

‘Yes. Like the name of the poet Petrarch’s inamorata. We met in Avignon. Half the girls there are called Laure. The half that aren’t are called Mireille. I’m not even sure that was her name. She was a bit of a storyteller. And secretive. Dorcas is very like her.’ His smile was tender.

‘Dorcas tells me all she knows is that her mother was a gypsy and a dancer and that she abandoned her at the age of one year and returned to France.’

‘Village gossip. She wasn’t a gypsy-just dark as the Provençaux are. Ancient Greek and Roman ancestry, of course, and it shows-the straight nose, the lustrous eyes, the black curling hair … But, of course, to the good Saxon folk of Surrey, dark equals gypsy. She was slim and lithe and looked like a dancer but she wasn’t one. Not professionally. As far as I know. I found her in a state of destitution. On the street, sleeping in a doorway near the Pope’s Palace. She’d fled her village and come to the big town looking for work.

‘No honest work available for a homeless girl. She’d been earning a crust or two singing outside cafés. There was a sort of folklore festival on. Gypsies and other performers in town. People were more willing to open up their purses for a pretty girl singing the old tunes. But it was clearly not going to last. I was going through my Modigliani phase at the time and here was a girl my idol would have smacked his lips over. Thin, dramatic, enigmatic, beautiful …’

‘Get on, Orlando!’

‘She became my model and my mistress and I took her back home to England with me. I was very young myself … and the money soon ran out … By then, she was pregnant with Dorcas.’

Joe recalled the acid remarks, the hard slaps he’d seen meted out to Dorcas by her grandmother, and cringed. He could imagine the impression that flinty nature and unyieldingly aristocratic bearing would have made on a young and pregnant foreigner.

‘A year? She survived a year under your mother’s roof? A happy time was had by all, then?’

‘You know my mama! I have tried to sell her to the Devil but he’s having nothing! Hatred at first sight! She made Laure’s life a misery. Tormented her, rejected the child when she was born. I did what I could. But, after a year, the moment the child was weaned, Laure disappeared. Left me a note asking me not to try to find her and to take care of Dorcas. I haven’t even got a portrait of her. She burned all the canvases. Made a bonfire of them in the orchard while I was away in London. Not that you’d have recognized her from those pictures.’ Orlando grimaced at the memory of his early work. ‘And that’s it. It was the year before the war broke out. For the next five years there was no possibility of travelling through France but every year since then, I’ve done my best.’

‘And your other children?’

‘All illegitimate like Dorcas,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Never married any of their mothers. Or rather they wouldn’t have me. I told you-nothing and nobody ever sticks to the smooth surface of the life and character of Orlando Joliffe. Money, lovers, children, friends, they all lose their foothold in the end and they drift away, heaving sighs of relief. You will too …’

‘Stupid, self-indulgent sod!’ said Joe mildly. ‘What about that angel, Nanny Tilling? That tower of strength, your groom, old Yallop? They’ve given their lives to you and your progeny. My sister Lydia is not unconcerned and it’ll take more than a bit of self-deprecating hand-wringing to dislodge me, mate!’

‘A good kick then? Will that work?’

‘Not even. Would you like to hear what I’m planning?’

Orlando groaned. ‘I don’t want Dorcas to be hurt. And there’s every chance that she might be if you go on with this ferreting. Hopes may be raised only to be dashed. Even worse-you may find her mother and discover that the woman herself has changed. Hadn’t it occurred to you? What do you think life will have been like for a fallen girl with no protector? She’ll be something quite other after thirteen years. Dorcas has a picture in her mind of a young and lovely dancer. Laure might look by this time more like that raddled pouter-pigeon of a duenna that Petrovsky hauls about with him. Did you notice her at the dinner table?’

‘Spanish-looking? Blue-black hair, wearing something purple and rather décolleté?’

‘That’s the one. Half a ton of gaudy stones cascading down the slopes of an ample bosom!’ Orlando shuddered. ‘Suppose my lovely Laure had turned into her! And she could have, you know! She’s the right age. Doesn’t bear thinking about. And, anyway, it’s the last thing she would want-to be presented with a grown-up daughter and an ageing ne’er-do-well foreign lover she discarded in disgust before the war. Listen! If we’re going to do this, and I see from that granite-jawed, mulish expression on your ugly mug that we are, there’s a proviso. A sine qua bloody non!’

‘Go on, I’m listening.’

‘If you find her … I insist on being the first to be told. Before Dorcas has any inkling. I insist on the right to assess the woman she is now before you start making the introductions.’

‘I understand. I too would place Dorcas’s peace of mind above all else. Including yours.’

‘Well, that’s honest enough!’ Orlando looked thoughtfully at Joe. ‘The child knew what she was doing, I’m thinking, when she decided to sink her hooks into you. She saw Sir Lancelot riding over the hill, flashing warrant cards, clinking handcuffs and reading the Riot Act to her granny and thought, “That’s for me!” Watch it, Joe … she’s a manipulative rascal.’

‘Don’t I know it!’ Joe agreed easily. ‘Now, come on! The story! And I’ve never enjoyed the love duets from La Bohème much so spare me all the romantic rubbish. I want facts. Names. Locations. A village, you said? Near Avignon? Which village? Think! In the Lubéron hills, is that all you know? Vast area. Did she mention her parents? Why had they thrown her out? Did she mention her school life? The name of a teacher? A best friend?’

‘Crikey! Do leave off! I feel like a rat between the jaws of a terrier. You’re shaking me to bits!’

‘I’ve barely started. The girl was with you for two years, Orlando. She must have got a word or two in edgeways in your conversations. No one can talk without giving away something about themselves. Just one name or one fact remembered could give us the key. Life in village France is organized around the parish-the town hall, the school and the church. Let’s start there. Was Laure religious?’

‘Not very. Occasionally she’d ask me to take her into the local Catholic church for confession. She insisted on having Dorcas christened.’

‘Then she was certainly a communicant. On somebody’s parish records. Look-every French girl talks of her first communion-did she mention the name of her village church? We could check the rolls if we had a name.’

Orlando stopped walking abruptly. ‘Good Lord! Sometimes I see why they call you a detective … It was the only photograph she had. I brought it with me … in case. I keep it here, in my wallet.’

He took a leather note-case from his inside pocket and produced a dog-eared sepia print. Joe had seen hundreds like it in every photographer’s studio window. Four twelve-year-old girls were standing together in a row, wearing long white dresses and veils. Downcast eyes looking shyly in the direction of the camera, they were clutching a white book in one gloved hand and a small bouquet of flowers in the other. A communion group. And taken by a professional photographer in a studio, judging by the painted backcloth showing the inevitable ruined temple on a wooded hillside. Joe looked for the photographer’s name and found to his annoyance that it had been scratched out.

He pointed to the defacement.

‘I told you-she was determined I shouldn’t know anything of her former life. I think she had something to hide.’

Joe was beginning to enjoy the challenge set so many years before by this unknown dark Provençal girl.

‘Well, we could start by showing this to the photographic establishments in the nearest big town which would be Avignon and asking if anyone recognized the scenery-’ Joe began.

‘I’ve done that. And the photographers of Arles and Aix and Marseille. You’d be surprised how many shut up shop in the war. The ones who struggled through didn’t recognize it.’

‘It’s all we’ve got. There must be … Hang on! Only four girls! Four!’

‘So what? Four friends. All the same age and size.’

‘But not the same in looks. I’d say these two here on the left are twins. This beauty next to them rather fancies herself as a dancer-do you see how she’s standing-quite deliberately, I’d say-with her feet in the at-ease ballet position?’

Orlando peered over his shoulder. ‘Oh, yes. Never noticed. And now I can’t see anything else of course. The photographer must have been a bit miffed when he developed it.’

‘But she’s not your Laure. I’m going to guess she’s the one on the right.’

‘You’ve got her!’

‘It’s a very small number for a communion class. That tells us it was a very small village. She was how old when you met her? … Seventeen? … In 1911? And she would have been twelve when this was taken. So we’re looking for a village in the Lubéron which had in 1906 a tiny class of communicants. Every young girl remembers the priest who instructed her. Think, Orlando, did she ever mention the name of-’

‘Ignace. Father Ignace.’ The words fell, leaden, from Orlando’s lips before Joe had finished his sentence. He closed his eyes in a childlike effort to remember or squeeze back an unmanly tear. ‘She once said, “Father Ignace would not approve.” And I’m sure she was quite right,’ he added with a haunted and melancholy smile. ‘It was the first of many things she did that would have raised a priestly eyebrow!’

‘May I keep this?’

Orlando began to splutter, clearly not keen to have the photograph leave his possession, but Joe was already sliding it away into his own wallet. As the last girl in the row, the small one at the end, the only one of the four not to have looked down in modesty, disappeared from sight, it seemed that she caught his eye and he knew he’d seen that look of mock innocence before.