Possession (69 page)

All
that
was the plot of a Romance. He was in a Romance, a vulgar and a high Romance simultaneously; a Romance was one of the systems that controlled him, as the expectations of Romance control almost everyone in the Western world, for better or worse, at some point or another.

He supposed the Romance must give way to social realism, even if the aesthetic temper of the time was against it.

In any case, since Blackadder and Leonora and Cropper had come, it had changed from Quest, a good romantic form, into Chase and Race, two other equally valid ones.

During his stay he had become addicted to a pale, chilled, slightly sweet pudding called Îles Flottantes, which consisted of a white island of foam floating in a creamy yellow pool of vanilla custard, haunted by the ghost, no more, of sweetness. As he and Maud packed hurriedly, and turned the car towards the Channel, he thought how much he would regret this, how the taste would fade and diminish in his memory.

Blackadder saw the Mercedes when he and Leonora came back to the hotel in the evening. He was feeling strained. Ariane had indeed given Leonora a photocopy of Sabine’s journal, which he had attempted to translate for her, with a fair degree of success. He had been pulled along, initially, by the sheer force of her presence, and her insistence that Roland and Maud had snuck off together to steal a scholarly march on both of them. He had suggested, when they were possessed of the journal, that they should come home and order a good translation and pursue their investigations. Leonora, who had asked Ariane a lot of questions about Roland and Maud, was concerned that they were “on to something” and should be tracked across Finistère. If the weather had been bad Blackadder might yet have insisted on returning to his burrow, the tools of his trade, his typewriter, his telephone. But the temptress sun shone, and he ate
a couple of good meals and said that now he was here, he would come to look at Kernemet and its surroundings.

Leonora drove. Her driving had panache and swoop, but was not comfortable. He sat beside her, wondering how he had got talked into all this. Her perfume filled the car, which was a hired Renault. It was a perfume of musk and sandalwood and something sharp that affected Blackadder in contradictory ways. He believed he found it suffocating. Underneath he sensed something else, a promise of darkness, thickness, flesh. He looked down once or twice at Leonora’s naked expanse of shoulders and bound breasts. Her skin, close up, had very fine wrinkles all over its dark gold, wrinkles not of old age but of a mixture of earlier softening and sun-toughening. He found these moving.

“I don’t understand Maud,” Leonora was saying. “I can’t figure out why she dashed off without a word to
me
, since that letter was mine after all, if property comes into it, which between friends I didn’t think it did, and we
were
friends, we’d pooled our ideas and written joint papers, all those things. Perhaps your Roland Michell is some kind of macho boss-man. It doesn’t figure.”

“He’s not. He’s not forceful. It’s his major failing.”

“It must be love.”

“That doesn’t explain Ariane Le Minier.”

“It sure doesn’t. What a turn-up. Not only a lesbian but a Fallen Woman and Unmarried Mother. Every archetype. I guess this is the hotel. Where they seemed to be staying. Maybe they’re back now.”

She began to turn into the hotel car park, only to find her way blocked by the Mercedes, which appeared to be backing awkwardly across the gateposts.

“Fuck off,” said Leonora. “Fuck off, asshole.”

“Oh dear,” said Blackadder. “That’s Cropper.”

“Well, he’ll have to fuck off. He’s obstructing the gateway,” said Leonora magisterially, honking several times with great vigour. The Mercedes went backwards and forwards, part of a series of precise adjustments designed to insert it into a parking-space that would just, but barely, contain it. Leonora rolled down the window and
cried out, “Listen, you bastard. I don’t have all night. I’ll be through in a second. Just hold off, can you?”

The Mercedes advanced and retreated.

Leonora advanced into the gateway.

The Mercedes pulled across it.

“For Chrissake, clear the entrance, you prick,” shouted Leonora.

The Mercedes retreated a little, slanting itself further.

Leonora put her foot firmly on the accelerator. Blackadder heard a reverberating clang and felt a jar along his spine. Leonora swore again and put the Renault into reverse. There was a sound and a sensation of tearing metal. The bumpers were locked and the two cars, like two bulls with crumpled horns, locked together. Leonora continued to reverse. Blackadder said nervously, “No, stop.” The sound of the Mercedes’ angry purr ceased abruptly. The dark window rolled down and Cropper put out his head. He said, “Arrêtez s’il vous plaît. Nous nous abîmons. Veuillez croire que je n’ai jamais rencontré de pires façons sur les routes françaises. Une telle manque de politesse—”

Leonora swung open her door and shot out a naked leg.

“We speak good American,” she said. “You arrogant pig. I remember you from Lincoln. You nearly killed me in Lincoln.”

“Hello, Mort,” said Blackadder.

“Ah,” said Cropper. “James. You have damaged my car.”

“
I
damaged it,” said Leonora. “Owing to your bad manners and lack of signals.”

“This is Professor Stern, Mortimer,” said Blackadder. “From Tallahassee. The editor of Christabel LaMotte.”

“In search of Bailey and Michell.”

“Exactly.”

“They’ve checked out. Three hours back. No one knows what they did here. Or where they went.”

Blackadder said, “If you put your back to your bumper, Mortimer, and I sit on ours, we might disengage them by joggling and swaying.”

“It will never be the same,” said Cropper.

“Are you staying here?” said Leonora. “We could discuss it over a drink. I don’t know what the insurance on this car hire runs to.”

It was not a pleasant dinner. Cropper was more put out than Blackadder had seen him, by the damage to his car, or by the flight of Roland and Maud, or by the presence of Leonora. He ordered lavishly, a huge platter of
fruits de mer
to start with, a mound of shells and whiskers and stony carapaces, surrounded by seaweed on a metal pedestal, followed by a huge boiled sea-spider or araignée, a hot angry scarlet, crusted with bumps and armoured crestings, waving a multiplication of feelers. He was provided with an armoury of implements for this feast, like a mediaeval torture chamber, pincers and grippers, prods and corkscrew skewers.

Blackadder ate hake abstemiously. Leonora ate lobster and talked about Kernemet.

“So sad, only the foundations and the orchard wall, nothing left. The menhir’s still there but the house is quite gone. Do you know what happened to LaMotte after she came here, Professor Cropper?”

“No. There are some letters in America in my possession, which describe her whereabouts in 1861. But about the time you speak of, the end of 1860, no. But I shall find out.”

He wielded a claw-cracker and a serpent-tongued pick. The heap of debris on his plate was higher than the original creatures had been, every sweet white morsel extracted.

“I intend to have those letters if I can,” he said. “And I intend to find out the rest.”

“The rest?”

“What became of their child. What they concealed from us.
I intend to know.”

“It may lie concealed forever in the grave,” said Blackadder, raising his glass to the fierce and melancholy face across the table. “May I propose a toast? Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. May they rest in peace.”

Cropper raised his glass.

“I’ll drink to that. But I shall find out.”

They parted at the foot of the stairs. Cropper bowed to Blackadder and Leonora and took himself off. Leonora put a hand on Blackadder’s arm.

“He’s kinda scarey, so intense, he takes it all personally. As though they did it to deceive him. Personally.”

“So they probably did. Among others. Shakespeare foresaw him, writing that curse.”

“I’m glad I scraped his great hearse. Do you want to come up with me? I feel all sad, we could comfort each other. It makes me sentimental, the sea and the sun.”

“It’s nice of you, but no thank you. I’m touched and grateful and glad you brought me here—I shall probably regret it forever—but better not. I’m not—” he wanted to say “up to it” or “in your class” or simply “strong enough,” but all those sounded vaguely insulting.

“Not to worry. Pity to complicate a good working relationship, hunh?”

She kissed him good night, with considerable force, and strode away.

The next day, they were driving quietly along a side road, having decided to make a small detour and take in the chapel with Gauguin’s wooden Christ, when they heard behind them a strange and fearsome sound. It combined a cough with a regular rhythmic thump followed by a scraping wheeze. It was like a beast in pain, or a creaking cart with an uneven wheel. It was the Mercedes with a crushed mudguard and an obviously damaged fan-belt, which overtook them, grinding, at the next junction. Its driver was again invisible, its wound painfully prominent.

“Horrid,” said Leonora. “Sinister.”

“Cropper is the Ankou,” said Blackadder, with sudden wit.

“Of course he is,” said Leonora. “We should have known that.”

“He won’t catch Bailey and Michell at that rate.”

“Nor shall we.”

“There isn’t much point to catching them, I suppose, really. We could have a picnic.”

“Let’s do that.”