way.”
“I agree.”
He rang off and I prepared myself to wait for the formalities to be completed. By now the remains of Piers must be reposing at the morgue. I suppose that I should have mustered the courage to visit him there, but I could not bring myself to do it. It was a contemptible lack of courage really – and in a doctor with a wide acquaintance with surgery – to funk it. But I did. I did.
Yet the thought of getting the funeral over was itself a relief, and I spent the morning wandering round the bookshops and recalling the past. There was no longer a soul in the place who recognised me, or if there was I did not meet one. I was back for an early lunch, still perplexed by the silence of Toby who by all calculations should by now have reached the town from Oxford. But in case the night was going to be a late one I took the wise precaution of closing my shutters and taking a siesta, for the deep fatigue of the last two days had told heavily on me.
In my dreams I found my way back to the old chateau, to the Verfeuille of the distant past, that strange catalyst of a stranger love; back to the life of the past with its extra-real flavour. Verfeuille sheltered us, and within its walls happiness became an imperative. Now circumstances had scattered the pieces, an invisible hand had overturned the chess-board. But sleep is merciful. In my dream nothing had changed as yet. I turned the leaves as one turns back a vine to catch glimpses of the old house between the branches. How could we have taken it all so much for granted?
It stands high up on the westward slopes of the Alpilles and from the highest orchards you can see not only misty Avignon in the plains below, but snatches of Aries and Tarascon as well. The winding roads lead steadily upwards towards it with a graceful inevitability, passing through rich olive holdings, the grey-silver leaves ashiver at the least caress of the mistral. The plots around the old house are so rich in springs, and the soil so correspondingly rich and loamy, that the ancients planted oak and plane and chestnut to make a verdant green shade around the house and protect it from sun and wind alike. Colonies of nightingales sing there by day and night to the tune of splashing water, while the hum of the cicada, deafening in August, provided a steady drizzle, as if of strings, as a background. Of the twin lions guarding the gates of the lodge one had lost a paw and the other half of the ceremonial sword he once held so proudly, point downward; as for the massive wrought-iron gates themselves, they had been carried away and melted down as a contribution to the war effort of fourteen-eighteen. The weeds have long since turned the gravel driveway to a mossy causeway where the wheels of a car tend to skid slightly in wet weather. On this unexpected carpet of silence one turns and twines for what seems an age before the house comes into view, perched slightly at an angle in order to take the best of the sun aspects and set a stout shoulder to the northern quarter from where the butting mistral blows.
The windows, so tall and narrow, wear deep stone eyebrows, while the high donjon, a prodigiously strong square tower, dating from the twelfth century, centres the whole mass, giving a minatory touch of fortress to what is now a comfortable dwelling merging into a farmhouse with all its clumsy dependencies – barns and stables, wine-magazines and olive-presses. The noise of cattle and poultry rules here, and the prismatic dust hangs in sunbeams. None of this will ever change. The whole of this heavy mass with its grilled windows encloses the grand central courtyard to which one gains access via a deeply vaulted passage-way – an easily defensible feature; this in turn leads to the vital heart of the place, the great wellhead with its carved crucifix and its benches. At each corner of the court rises a quaint and crusty little tourelle from which the besieged could keep up a raking fire along the
“I agree.”
He rang off and I prepared myself to wait for the formalities to be completed. By now the remains of Piers must be reposing at the morgue. I suppose that I should have mustered the courage to visit him there, but I could not bring myself to do it. It was a contemptible lack of courage really – and in a doctor with a wide acquaintance with surgery – to funk it. But I did. I did.
Yet the thought of getting the funeral over was itself a relief, and I spent the morning wandering round the bookshops and recalling the past. There was no longer a soul in the place who recognised me, or if there was I did not meet one. I was back for an early lunch, still perplexed by the silence of Toby who by all calculations should by now have reached the town from Oxford. But in case the night was going to be a late one I took the wise precaution of closing my shutters and taking a siesta, for the deep fatigue of the last two days had told heavily on me.
In my dreams I found my way back to the old chateau, to the Verfeuille of the distant past, that strange catalyst of a stranger love; back to the life of the past with its extra-real flavour. Verfeuille sheltered us, and within its walls happiness became an imperative. Now circumstances had scattered the pieces, an invisible hand had overturned the chess-board. But sleep is merciful. In my dream nothing had changed as yet. I turned the leaves as one turns back a vine to catch glimpses of the old house between the branches. How could we have taken it all so much for granted?
It stands high up on the westward slopes of the Alpilles and from the highest orchards you can see not only misty Avignon in the plains below, but snatches of Aries and Tarascon as well. The winding roads lead steadily upwards towards it with a graceful inevitability, passing through rich olive holdings, the grey-silver leaves ashiver at the least caress of the mistral. The plots around the old house are so rich in springs, and the soil so correspondingly rich and loamy, that the ancients planted oak and plane and chestnut to make a verdant green shade around the house and protect it from sun and wind alike. Colonies of nightingales sing there by day and night to the tune of splashing water, while the hum of the cicada, deafening in August, provided a steady drizzle, as if of strings, as a background. Of the twin lions guarding the gates of the lodge one had lost a paw and the other half of the ceremonial sword he once held so proudly, point downward; as for the massive wrought-iron gates themselves, they had been carried away and melted down as a contribution to the war effort of fourteen-eighteen. The weeds have long since turned the gravel driveway to a mossy causeway where the wheels of a car tend to skid slightly in wet weather. On this unexpected carpet of silence one turns and twines for what seems an age before the house comes into view, perched slightly at an angle in order to take the best of the sun aspects and set a stout shoulder to the northern quarter from where the butting mistral blows.
The windows, so tall and narrow, wear deep stone eyebrows, while the high donjon, a prodigiously strong square tower, dating from the twelfth century, centres the whole mass, giving a minatory touch of fortress to what is now a comfortable dwelling merging into a farmhouse with all its clumsy dependencies – barns and stables, wine-magazines and olive-presses. The noise of cattle and poultry rules here, and the prismatic dust hangs in sunbeams. None of this will ever change. The whole of this heavy mass with its grilled windows encloses the grand central courtyard to which one gains access via a deeply vaulted passage-way – an easily defensible feature; this in turn leads to the vital heart of the place, the great wellhead with its carved crucifix and its benches. At each corner of the court rises a quaint and crusty little tourelle from which the besieged could keep up a raking fire along the
Similar Books
