The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [99]
“I’m still awed by that place,” he went on. “It opened my eyes rather. I don’t know much about art, just sort of assumed there were these high points, like the ancient Greeks and the medieval cathedrals, and then Michelangelo and Leonardo at the Renaissance, and then Van Gogh and Cézanne. Just a few high points. Now I know that I’ve seen another, from a time long before I thought there was any civilization at all.” The conversation had now been steered to safer ground. Lydia noticed it was deftly done.
“Time to add a second postcard,” he went on, drawing his wallet from inside his jacket. He opened it and withdrew a small and much-worn postcard of a Vermeer. Lydia recognized it at once, the Girl with the Pearl Earring, a winsome portrait of deep charm.
“I was in Appeldorn, one of the Dutch military bases, on a NATO course and we took a weekend off to go to Amsterdam. They had this Vermeer exhibition. Just by chance, since I had nothing better to do that morning, I went along, and fell in love with this girl. Carried this with me ever since. In Northern Ireland sometimes, when it was really bad, I’d take her out and look at her and feel better.”
“Why not a photo of your children?” asked Lydia.
“Your own children are the kind of distraction that can get you killed—the last thing you want to think about at times like that,” he said grimly. “Believe me.”
“So which souvenir image do you want from Lascaux?” Clothilde asked. “The falling horse, the two bison, the great bull?”
“No, I think I’d take the swimming deer, except that now I’ve seen Lascaux, I already know the one I want.” He pulled out one of Lydia’s Polaroids of the small bull he had brought to her the day they met. “All the others from Lascaux go together, and I don’t want to select just one. I would feel happier just with this one that was mine, at least for a while, even if we never see it again.”
When they got back into their own cars at Malrand’s place, Clothilde steered Lydia into her own car and told Manners to follow. As her little convertible roared up Malrand’s drive, Lydia realized nervously that she was in for a woman-to-woman chat. Never a prospect she much relished, she felt at a disadvantage. Despite her liking for the woman, Clothilde was formidable, and Lydia was not ready to question herself about her feelings toward Manners, let alone face an inquisition.
“You aren’t sleeping with him yet, are you?” Clothilde began.
“I was thinking of a similar question about you and Malrand.”
“We had a very pleasant spring and summer a long time ago, when I had just got my doctorate and just before he went into politics.”
“Wasn’t he married then?”
“Yes, she was one of those Parisian literary ladies. Preferred to stay in St-Germain. We had the Périgord to ourselves. But you’re changing the subject. You’re falling for the handsome major, no?”
“Falling in love? I don’t think so. Attracted, certainly. Interested, yes. He’s an entertaining companion, but quite a private one. There are lots of depths to him, parts I haven’t been allowed anywhere near. I don’t mean the military stuff. More the way his mind works. That question he raised in the car, about whether somebody might have been blocking your project deliberately. I didn’t think his mind worked that way.”
“Suspicious, you mean, or intuitive?”
“Both. He presents himself as a simple soldier, very straightforward, everything on the surface. Then suddenly you see a hint of something much deeper. Looking back at how he maneuvered me into coming to Périgord with him, I think I first saw it then.”
“Some of his depths are charming. Like his little Vermeer girl. Any woman would feel challenged by that, to replace that work of oil with an image of herself next to his heart. But it is very flattering that he went to such trouble to get you here, no? And if you want to satisfy your curiosity, there’s only one way.”
“Take him to bed, you mean?”
“Why not? At the worst, you’d have fun.