Night Without Stars by Winston Graham Page B

Gourdon, Mother. Giles’s name is Gordon.”
    â€œNevertheless it is said it was the birthplace of the Gordons. Have you ever been there, m’sieu?”
    â€œNo. But I shall go”
    â€œA wonderful view. But pardon, of course, I forgot”
    So she also had heard of me.
    â€œWe were out sailing Mother, and got caught in the storm.”
    â€œWell, it is over now. In an hour you will be able to start back.”
    Later we went into the back room, and Armand, the brother, came in; and then two more men. All the men were a bit surly, Mère Roget polite with a hint of reserve. I wondered if they were pro-Grognard or merely anti anyone who threatened to replace Jacques. I would have liked to go, but couldn’t leave without Alix.
    There was a piano in this room, and someone started strumming on it, while the place filled up. It’s always more difficult to pick out things when there are a lot of people in a room. A fisherman with the agreeable name of Roquefort began to sing the choruses, and several of the others joined in. Alix was in the kitchen talking to Mère Roget, and I felt rather out of it.
    Eventually the pianist gave up and noisily refused to do any more. He slumped over to a table near by and I could hear him gulping his wine.
    They were a queer bunch, more mixed than one expects to find even in a French café. Two people at the next table were discussing the effects of inhaling chloride of ethyl. They were the first cultured voices I’d heard except Alix’s.
    Alix said: “ you play yourself, don’t you, Giles?”
    She’d come in unnoticed in the din and had evidently been watching me.
    â€œI used to know ‘Bluebells of Scotland,’ ” I said shortly.
    I might have guessed that that wouldn’t register.
    â€œWould you play something now?”
    â€œGood God, no!”
    â€œPlease. To please me.”
    â€œIt’s high time we went. It’ll take us two hours to get back.”
    â€œNever mind. Just a little tune. Do you know anything French?” Some of the others were listening.
    I said: “You’re embarrassing me very much, Alix. I haven’t touched a piano for three years. Well go now and say goodbye to Mère Roget.”
    She put her hand on mine. “ Please, dear Giles.”
    It was a bit silly to get hot and indignant, but I couldn’t help it. The last thing I wanted was to be made conspicuous.
    â€œHell!” I said, and got up and groped round to the piano. Somebody clapped politely.
    I’m not a good pianist by any respectable standards—partly because when I was ten I found I could play any tune I could whistle without learning the notes. But in the old days I’d been able to make a show among friends.
    Now I wasn’t among friends. I sat on the chair in embarrassment and couldn’t think what to play. Quite a lot of the people had stopped talking.
    I thought of a thing my mother had played and that I’d learned from her, a short thing by Liszt which ends up with a whole pianoful of octaves and is generally the sort of showy piece that fits a bad temper.
    Anyway I went crashing into this, desperately out of practice and playing a piano for the first time without seeing it. But perhaps annoyance helped and I got through the whole thing with only about six mis-hits.
    When it was over quite a lot of people clapped and I heard them say: “ Tres bien!” and “Bravo!” and “ Écoutez le donc !”
    I wiped my hands down the sides of Armand’s alpaca coat and tried “ Gardens in the Rain.” Debussy is a good starter in most company, if the company isn’t chichi, and he went over well here. I dropped three bars in the middle, but nobody seemed to mind. Everyone had stopped talking.
    â€œGo on, please,” said Alix, who’d got round to the piano.
    Then I suddenly thought of those Provencal songs I’d learned here twelve or thirteen