The village of Cortiano was tiny, a huddle of red-roofed cottages hugging what might, in winter or early spring, be a small river, the kind which dried to a rock-strewn gully as the year progressed. The house sat above it on top of a hill. Once a farm, the sturdy outbuildings had been converted and incorporated into the dwelling so that now it had trebled in size without having appeared to do so. Neat rows of vines dotted the south and west slopes of the hill, while to the north and east there were olive trees, their leaves fluttering in a light breeze. At one point the rock broke from the soil and fell in a small cliff (or perhaps this was the quarry which had supplied stone for the buildings) and at the foot of it, cunningly constructed to look natural, was a swimming-pool: nothing artificially blue or geometrical, merely a glitter of water in a hollow of rock. Kate would have liked to go down to it and swim there and then.
She had parked her rented Renault in the shade of some pines; it was very small but could cope with Corsican gradients if given time; on all sides of Cortiano rose higher hills, and beyond them mountain slopes. She now sat on a rock, drinking Orangina and examining The Cousins’ continental domain from the roadside above it.
In her imagination she’d visualized the place as being shut up, comatose in their absence, but there were men working among the vines, and the upstairs windows of the house were wide open, with bedding hung out in the sun to air. Whether the owners, or rather the leaseholders, were there or not, Cortiano was a working farm, a going concern. When she’d finished her drink Kate would go down—she had decided how to introduce herself—but whether she would get an answer to any of her questions was in the hands of chance; however, she felt optimistic, had felt optimistic ever since arriving—the previous afternoon—in Bastia some twenty miles away to the north-east.
Not that her first glimpse of the island had been encouraging. Even the coast of France had been enshrouded in a mysterious pinkish haze which thickened over the sea, so that by the time they were flying over Cap Corse, the northern tip of Corsica, nothing was visible except a few bare peaks and, further south, the higher spine of the island and a suggestion of sprawling forest.
The man sitting next to her gestured gloomily: ‘Sahara.’ She remembered then that once, even in London some two thousand miles away from that vast and savage desert, her car had been lightly dusted with Saharan sand.
The plane descended through swirling veils, to which the local beaches were adding their tithe of grit, and came in to a surprisingly smooth landing at Poretta, the small airport outside Bastia. A strong, hot wind was blowing.
When it came to the matter of hotels, Kate decided to throw herself on the mercy of her taxi-driver who, like his vehicle, seemed middle-aged and reliable. To her horror, since they were on a busy road, he turned right around in his seat and examined her; then said, ‘You’re not a tourist, you’re a visitor, correct?’ It was a nice distinction. He continued, but with his eyes on the road again, much to Kate’s relief. ‘The porter at La Résidence pays me a little something for every foreigner I take there, but he is Genoese and also a Communist, and the place is too expensive. I will take you to a small hotel, quiet, respectable, clean: you will like it.’ He added as an afterthought, ‘It belongs to my second cousin by marriage.’
In this one speech, had she known it, Kate had experienced all or most of Corsica. By and large the Hotel Univers was indeed what he’d promised, quietness to the Southern mind being entirely a matter of degree; at least it faced a one-way street which might halve the traffic noise. In any case, Kate asked for a room high up at the back, and was greatly pleased with her view over variously russet roofs and, naturally, a leafless forest of television aerials.
Like many people who prefer hotel rooms with as much air and light as possible, which, in old cities, usually means the top two or three floors, she was always a little worried by the idea of fire: disabled elevators, staircases thick with blinding smoke. No such fear here. Due to the haphazard angles of the ancient streets the houses behind the hotel were not set squarely to its back, and her room occupied the point of the angle; only some eight feet from her window was a neighbouring roof: a flat terrace criss-crossed by clothes-lines from which a fat woman with grey hair was at the moment unpegging her day’s wash. She smiled and waved a plump hand. Kate returned the greeting. In case of fire she could jump the gap with ease. Conversely, of course, anyone wishing to enter her room could do the reverse, but this didn’t worry her; she had few valuables and always carried them in her shoulder-bag.
All in all she was mildly pleased with the way things had gone so far; she had always rather enjoyed travelling alone, and her French had come up to scratch with barely a mistake. Of course, an attractive girl on her own in any Mediterranean town must always run an intense gauntlet of male attention, but in the past she’d found that much of this was a kind of macho-formality, even in a sense good manners. How much worse it would have been to find oneself ignored.
Immediately opposite the hotel, which had no bar or restaurant, was the Café l’Oasis. It was somewhat shabby and apparently patronized only by men, but there were two women behind the counter, and if suggestive comments were made upon Kate’s entrance, these were quickly stilled by a savage look from Madame, a natural blonde of perhaps forty with unusual black eyes, a handsome face, and an air of authority; with perfect tact she coerced this rare female customer on to a stool near the till where she could keep an eye on her vis-à-vis ‘the boys’: for Kate now saw that this was very much a haunt of ‘the boys’ of various ages, some of them quite obviously the town’s leading rogues.
Anna, the other woman behind the bar, was perhaps thirty, dark and pretty and a great favourite with the clientele; when she moved, Kate immediately noticed that she had a painful limp, and, getting the measure of the place and the men who frequented it, guessed that it was sympathy for her affliction as much as admiration for her prettiness which made her popular.
Needless to say, she reminded Kate of Daniel, and the thought of him re-aroused a sense of urgency. She intended to begin her investigation first thing in the morning, and so asked Madame if she knew where Cortiano was. No, she didn’t, but in a raised voice which easily carried to the furthermost corner of the bar where there was a small billiards table, she consulted her customers for information. One—a hulking youth in his twenties—replied, ‘Way up beyond Campile on the road to Grossa.’ In reply to Madame’s raised eyebrows, Kate said, ‘I have relations there, I’m going to visit them.’ The young man added that he’d be happy to give mademoiselle a lift in his van any time she wanted; this generated some laughter, as did Kate’s reply, ‘I’ll take you up on that when I know you better.’
Madame, whose name was Françoise, directed her to a good inexpensive restaurant: ‘Owned by another Pied Noir—I am one myself. You know? Algeria?’ Kate knew.
Altogether she enjoyed her evening, a pleasant change from the rich and pompous ambience of Hill Manor; as she returned to the hotel she noticed, with no surprise, that a fiery argument was now taking place in l’Oasis, shouted insults, a thumping of tables and much uninhibited laughter. She would like to have gone back there to take a look, but doubted if Madame Françoise would have approved.
Now, the Orangina finished and the examination of Cortiano completed, there was nothing to stop her embarking on her quest. She drove down a twisting road into the valley, passed through the village—closed shutters and flaking walls which no doubt concealed spotless interiors—then over a bridge and up another winding track which led to the farm and ended in a wide expanse of gravel facing the house. She took her time getting out of the car because she wanted to be observed by anyone caring to do so; she felt that this would probably be the best way of meeting whoever had been left in charge during The Cousins’ absence.
She’d been expecting some kind of peasant farmer, but there appeared in the open doorway a dapper figure wearing black corduroy jeans tucked into black boots, a scarlet shirt and an expensive black leather jacket; the tanned face was intelligent, quick-eyed. ‘Mademoiselle?’
‘I just came to take a look at the place. I suppose I expected it to be closed, but when I saw …’ She gestured to the men working in the vineyard, to the bedclothes airing at the windows. ‘My name is Ackland, Kate Ackland.’
‘Ah, a relative of the owners.’
‘Cousin.’ And, knowing the scope of this word in French parlance, she added, ‘Monsieur Mark is my uncle. I understood they held a lease.’
‘They do, but “owners” is less complicated, and they came here long ago.’ He indicated the front door and she preceded him into a cool, shadowed hall: the original stone floor and beams, some pieces of what she took to be ancient local furniture, gleaming with polish and age. Extreme simplicity which surprised her. But why? Helen had taste.
‘Mademoiselle would like to look around?’
‘Yes, I would.’ She hadn’t really dared hope that he might say, ‘Help yourself, I’ve better things to do,’ and he did not. ‘Looking around’ meant a guided tour. He introduced himself as Jacques Lombardi. In spite of his quiet manner she had no doubt that he was a man to be reckoned with. Perhaps she’d been wrong to give him her real name, but it had seemed the most direct route to acceptance. She realized that he was assessing her as busily as she was assessing him, and perhaps more acutely; and he was adept at the evasion of leading questions. When she commented on the surprising number of bedrooms—from outside the house looked smaller—and added, ‘A wonderful place to entertain—I’m sure they make the most of it,’ he gave her a strange, dark look and replied, ‘Some of the outbuildings are now staff quarters. My wife and I have a pleasant flat on the other side of the courtyard, facing east.’
The rest of Cortiano was as simple and as pleasing as the hall, with a beautiful sitting-room which could, by sliding huge modern windows, become part of a wide terrace, part of the whole valley beyond. A middle-aged woman was polishing furniture and brass fittings. It was here that Lombardi, perhaps rather pointedly, asked Kate when she’d last seen the Acklands. Kate could reply in all honesty, ‘Last Monday. Uncle Mark and Aunt Helen, and two of my cousins, Giles and Miranda.’ Very subtly, he had put her on the defensive: she sounded defensive, even to her own ears.
But at her words the woman turned, smiling; was on the point of speaking when Jacques Lombardi gave her a look so sharp that it might well have drawn blood. The defensive posture did not come naturally to Kate, and this tiny incident roused her to the attack; gently, and with a laugh, she said, ‘Why, Monsieur Lombardi, you’re quite evasive about them, aren’t you? Have I stumbled upon some terrible family secret?’
His dark Corsican eyes flashed at the mockery, largely, Kate suspected, because the woman had not been able, or had not wished, to hide an equally mocking smile. It seemed reasonable to suppose that Lombardi would not be all that popular with the staff; doubtless he ruled them severely, perhaps harshly. ‘Ah, mademoiselle, you tease me. But I have an important responsibility here. I take it seriously.’
‘I can see you do. I know my uncle has absolute faith in you.’ And, riding on this, she found she could quite easily turn to the woman and add, ‘You were about to say something, madame.’
‘Ah, mademoiselle, it was hearing the names of my little ones, Giles and Miranda.’ And, noting Kate’s surprise, ‘I was their nurse, nurse to all of them. Gianetta, they still call me Netta.’
‘Of course. I’ve heard of you. Miranda said I was to give you their love.’
‘Bless her. And Giles, he has become a handsome young man, eh?’
‘Oh yes, just like his father.’
Lombardi cut sharply across this feminine chit-chat. ‘No doubt you would like to see the cellars where we make the wine.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It is nearly one o’clock. My wife is a superb cook, and superb cooks demand punctuality.’
Kate nodded and said to the woman, ‘Perhaps we’ll talk again. Gianetta’s an Italian name.’
‘Oh yes, mademoiselle, I’m Italian. I came here with them from Italy.’
Kate turned away from Lombardi who would certainly have caught the excitement in her eyes, even if he couldn’t interpret it. Wasn’t this exactly the kind of lead she’d been hoping for? Netta, who had come with Mark and Helen Ackland from Italy. Perhaps the fact meant nothing; perhaps it was a vital link.
During her tour of the cellars—not her first experience of the mystique of viticulture—she was abstracted, wondering how and when she could resume her talk with the Italian woman; she knew her preoccupation didn’t show; if running a hotel had taught her nothing else, it had taught her how to carry on a conversation while considering half a dozen other subjects.
She noticed that Lombardi managed to time the itinerary so that it ended at one, on the dot, when he approached a large bell bolted to the side of the house and tolled it six times, liberating his workers for their lunch-hour. He then escorted her to her car and did not say that he hoped to see her again; it was as if, by a strange osmosis, the air of duplicity which emanated from The Cousins at Longwater had been transferred to this foreign place, to this foreign man; or was it that they, being what they were, had employed Jacques Lombardi because they sensed in him a made-to-measure lackey?
He held the door for her, closed it upon her once she was in the driver’s seat, and then stood there waiting to witness her departure. Kate was irritated; she’d hoped that he would hurry off to his superb luncheon, leaving her free to walk back into the house and find Gianetta who, she was sure, would have liked to ask more questions about her ‘little ones’. Did she live in the staff quarters on the other side of the courtyard, or perhaps in the village? In any case, Kate now had no option but to drive away. Lombardi raised a hand in farewell. Kate ignored it.
But as things turned out she needn’t have worried. If Netta wanted to continue their talk she had her own means of ensuring that the talk continued; on rounding one of the corners of the track which twisted down through the vineyard, Kate came upon a placid figure sitting on a rock under an olive tree, knitting a sock. As she braked to a standstill she noticed that, at this point, the house above them was out of sight. Netta glanced up over her flashing needles, and Kate sat down beside her in the shade. With the heat of midday, even so early in the year, cicadas were sizzling and sawing all around them.
‘I think,’ said Netta, with true Italian chauvinism, ‘our Monsieur Lombardi never forgets that Bonaparte came from this island.’
Kate laughed. ‘He’s not very welcoming. I don’t think he liked me.’
‘That was fear. He felt that you’d been sent by the family to spy on him.’
‘I hope your talking to me like this won’t get you in trouble.’
‘Hah! Firstly he can’t see us here. Secondly it would take more than Jacques Bigboots to come between me and Madame.’
‘She likes you.’
‘Didn’t I bring up all her little ones? And also my husband runs the vineyard and runs it well. Until he came here the wine was vinegar. Now it is good, sometimes superb. Monsieur Mark is proud of his wine.’
‘So you came from Italy with my uncle and aunt.’
‘When little Giles was only three weeks old. Corsica, I thought, that is barbarian country. But Madame insisted, and now I like it here. I met my André, he has a temper but he’s a good husband, we both work at the house, and Monsieur Bigboots gives us no trouble.’
Kate said, ‘I’d forgotten Giles was born in Italy.’
‘At La Spezia. I was lucky to get the job, I was eighteen, I knew nothing. But my cousin was a maid at the villa there—ah, she was a liar, that Julia—and she said to Madame, “I know the perfect nurse, young but well-trained.” Madame could see that I had no training at all, but I loved the little one and she liked me. So …’
Kate was thinking: La Spezia, wasn’t that a big, ugly town: a port, factories, hardly the kind of place Mark and Helen would have chosen to live? She asked, cautiously, ‘Where were they before that? I think they’d been living in Italy for some time.’
‘I think so too, but I only met them then, at La Spezia. The girls were born here at Cortiano.’ She glanced at Kate with a touch of canny surprise. ‘Didn’t you know that?’
‘Yes. But I’m almost the same age as they are, remember—children don’t think much about such things.’
‘No, of course not. Oh!’ A hand flew up to her mouth. ‘You are their cousin, and your father was Monsieur Mark’s brother who was killed in the auto crash.’
‘Yes.’
‘How stupid of me! And your brother is still …’
‘Crippled, yes.’
‘Ah, il povero, il povero!’
Kate realized that she was walking yet another tightrope. This woman owed a great deal to Mark and Helen Ackland, and her life was in many ways dependent on theirs, but all the same, she felt that there was a frail bond between the two of them, sitting here in the shade, serenaded by cicadas. It was very possible that too many questions, too pointed, might meet with resistance, even silence, yet those questions had to be asked, for this Italian woman knew the answers to many of them. She needed an excuse and had no time to think up a good one; she said, ‘Netta, I’m not at Cortiano by chance.’
The other nodded, knitting-needles clicking.
‘There has been … trouble in our family. Someone … is making threats and demanding money, and we must know who it is. My aunt and uncle are too busy; I’ve been sent to see what I can find out.’ It was the best she could do on the spur of the moment. She waited in some anguish for a response.
Eventually Netta said, ‘No one here, no one at Cortiano.’
Kate breathed again; to some degree at least her story had been accepted. ‘Why are you so sure?’
‘I know them inside out. Lombardi is the only one who might try such tricks, but he wouldn’t do it. With all his faults he’s a decent man, loyal.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ She let the implication sink in; and added: ‘Yet this person obviously knew them when they were living abroad. If not here, then in Italy.’
Netta laid her knitting on her lap and turned her dark intelligent eyes on the girl beside her. Kate understood that it was this intense scrutiny, not the acceptance of her flimsy story, which would decide whether or not she was to get any answers. Feeling base, but also feeling that the end must justify the means, she met the regard with her own clear eyes.
Netta smiled. ‘Your reason for asking questions is no concern of mine—we all have our own reasons for what we do. But I’m not a bad judge of character and I know you’re honest. I also know that when he was a younger man, Monsieur Mark was foolish, wild, sometimes worse than that. He made many stupid mistakes and many enemies, and he was in trouble over money more than once. If he’s being threatened now, it’s no surprise to me.’
Kate was astonished at this burst of candour, and could not hide the fact. Netta grimaced. ‘Now you think I am being disloyal, but I’m not. It is Madame for whom I have a great regard. I find Monsieur Mark … unfriendly, I’d be lying if I said I like him.’ She picked up her knitting again. ‘And I think you’re right to ask questions in Italy. I think something happened there.’
Kate’s heart seemed for a moment to have stopped beating. ‘At La Spezia?’
‘No, no—before I met them. Only later, when we’d come to Cortiano did I think this. I’ll tell you why. It was … as if they were hiding from something or somebody. They asked no one to their beautiful house, no guests, not even from England. And they hardly went out at all themselves.’
‘But … how long did this go on?’
‘Years. Seven, eight years. A few local people perhaps, and a few children for Giles and Lucy—Miranda was a baby. I felt so sorry for Madame, she liked to entertain, she didn’t enjoy always being alone.’
Kate was silent. This was an entirely new aspect of The Cousins in exile. She had always imagined a busy and sometimes raffish social life. She now realized that her questioning of Jacques Lombardi had been woefully inept; she had even mentioned all the entertaining they must have done at Cortiano. No wonder he had given her that odd, dark look, and had thereafter seemed suspicious: there had been no entertaining of any kind.
And what had Rosemary Howard said, sitting there on her high-backed chair in Bournemouth? ‘Things didn’t get any better abroad. More scandals, oh dear, yes! And he was taken to court by some Italian family … that curious ménage-à-trois.’ So if there had been this solitary monastic existence at Cortiano—eight years, for God’s sake!—they could well have been taking refuge from something which had occurred in Italy between their leaving England and their arrival at La Spezia. It was that trail which she must follow from clue to clue, like some childhood treasure hunt in reverse. It covered a span of several years, and she hoped the object of her search did not lie very far back in time; she had two weeks’ holiday—which might be extended to a third—and not a great deal of money.
Her relationship with Gianetta had at some point lost its early reticence, and she felt she could now say quite frankly, ‘First I will go to La Spezia and see what I can find out there. Where did you all live?’
‘In an old villa on the road to Portovenere, with a beautiful view across the bay. But last time I went to see my cousin it had been pulled down to make room for ugly apartments.’
Of course, the cousin, Julia, who had been a maid at the villa, and had inveigled young Gianetta into her job as nurse. She said, ‘Perhaps your cousin would remember something.’
‘Julia will remember everything. Oh, but she was a terror—listening at keyholes, and the questions she’d ask point-blank, I don’t know where she got the nerve!’ Obviously Julia was the card of the family, for Netta was laughing at the very thought of her. ‘Yes, go and see Julia, I will give you her address. Perhaps I will even telephone, in the cheap time, to tell her you’re coming.’
But as they parted she was serious again, eyeing the English girl with true Italian acumen. ‘You should be careful in what you’re doing. Italy is a man’s country, it would be better if you were travelling with a man.’
‘I’ll manage. I take care.’
Netta nodded. It struck Kate that she had not believed one word of the story so swiftly invented as cover for so many peculiar questions; and it was remarkable (perhaps remarkably Mediterranean in character) that disbelief didn’t inhibit her in any way. The story had been ‘convenable’, one of those French words which flummox the dictionaries, meaning so much more than ‘correct’ or ‘proper’: meaning, in this case, a passport to common feminine ground upon which they could meet and talk in comfort. Upon this same ground, Netta could lean forward as they parted and kiss the smooth young cheek, saying, ‘Take care. God bless you. I will pray for your brother. And in case you should worry—no word of what we’ve said will be repeated to anyone.’
Kate drove away deep in thought. She had no doubt that Netta would keep her mouth tightly shut, but she found herself wondering whether Jacques Lombardi—the good servant—would report her visit to his lord and master, Mark Ackland; it was an uncomfortable thought. Yet if she’d introduced herself under a false name, as a family friend perhaps, he would have turned her away forthwith; moreover she would never have found herself mentioning her cousins, Giles and Miranda, by name; and if she hadn’t mentioned their names Netta would never have spoken, and their conversation under the olive tree would never have taken place. In fact, the visit would have been profitless instead of a mine of information. It seemed to her that she had gained a great deal by taking a small risk.
By the time she got back to Bastia it was three o’clock, and her stomach was telling her that she’d had nothing to eat since two croissants, with a cup of coffee, at breakfast-time. She went to l’Oasis and found that Madame was at home, dealing with her husband and sons, and that Anna was in charge. The place was empty except for two young men playing desultory billiards. Kate asked for a Croque Monsieur and a glass of Kronenbourg; when the girl brought them to her table she seemed inclined to linger. ‘Did you find Cortiano, mademoiselle?’
‘Yes. It wasn’t too difficult.’ She indicated the other chair, and Anna willingly sat down. ‘You like our little bar, you like Madame Françoise?’
‘Very much.’
‘We see few visitors in here. It is perhaps too … rough for them. Françoise is a wonderful woman—God must have been watching over me that day, I had my accident just outside this door.’
Obviously she was dying to tell her story, and Kate had been curious about her from the start, realizing that she was not Corsican but Spanish. From Barcelona, it seemed. She had come to Bastia on a pilgrimage with a party of friends: by motor-coach to Marseille and then by ferry. They had wanted to pray at the church of Ste Croix where there was a miraculous crucifix which had been recovered from the sea under mysterious circumstances, a very holy relic. Anna had never left home before, and was so excited by the journey and by seeing the cross that she had paid no attention to Bastia’s ruthless traffic; she’d been knocked down by a van which had crushed her right leg with both wheels: there, just outside in the street.
Françoise had run out of l’Oasis and, with some of her stalwart customers, had taken charge of the injured girl, going with her to the hospital, since few of her companions spoke any French at all. And then, for all the months Anna had spent up there, and throughout all the painful treatment, Françoise had come to see her every day. But when the happy moment came for her discharge, Anna had burst into tears, for how could she return to Barcelona and her humble job of office-cleaning? She couldn’t even kneel down. And Françoise had said, ‘You won’t need to kneel down behind my bar, you can stand up and serve my customers.’
And so Anna had stayed in Bastia and become popular at l’Oasis and made many friends; and she owed it all to Madame Françoise—that was the kind of woman she was—and every week Anna went to Ste Croix to bless her benefactress and thank God for the way it had all turned out.
The simplicity of this story, and the teller’s face alight with wonder, contrasted harshly with the circumstances of Kate’s own pilgrimage to Bastia; and no sooner was she out in the street, wandering up the Boulevard Paoli, than her mind once again began to seethe with the revelations and surprises of her talk with Gianetta. They accompanied her on a stroll through the Old Town, where her eyes took notice of very little, and back to the Place St Nicholas. A ferry was just coming in to the New Port, and she realized that it would have been here, when first they came to Corsica, that Mark and Helen, the baby Giles and his young nurse, would have disembarked at the end of their short voyage from Italy.
Watching the ship, she thought for the first time that it was odd, since Mark was five years older than her father, and had been married five years earlier, that he and Helen had produced no child until Kate herself was already two. Giles, their eldest, had been born in the same year as Daniel. Well, on second thoughts there was perhaps nothing so unusual about it. Mark was a playboy and had been ordered out of England; presumably he and Helen were too rootless, too busy enjoying themselves, to think of settling down. Or perhaps Mark expected to be forgiven and recalled by his parents, and only when he and his wife realized this wasn’t going to happen did they decide to find a home and have children: at Cortiano, as things turned out: Cortiano, their self-imposed prison. This was the most disconcerting thing she’d yet learned about their time abroad. ‘It was as if,’ Netta had said, ‘they were hiding from something or somebody. They asked no one to their beautiful house, no guests, not even from England. And they hardly went out at all themselves.’
Had her grandmother stumbled upon the reason for this mysterious seclusion, thereby reanimating the fear which had led to it? And surely it must have been a very considerable fear to affect Mark Ackland so radically: that charming young reprobate who didn’t give a damn for anyone. It would have been more like him to flaunt whatever monstrous escapade he’d got himself into, making a dinner-party joke of it. Unless, of course, he’d become involved in something criminal. But that couldn’t have been the case, since he’d then made an obviously legal withdrawal to Corsica, a tenant of property at Cortiano and, as such, correctly registered with the Préfet’s office.
Struggling with this convoluted problem, Kate went back to the Hotel Univers and up to her room. She took a cool shower, put on a minimum of make-up and a light dress, and was just picking up her shoulder-bag and a cardigan when it happened. There was a crash of breaking glass which made her wheel around in shock. Something was hurtling towards her through the unshuttered windows, net curtains flaring out into the room. At such moments time becomes meaningless, performing Einstein-ian tricks. Kate dodged, and the thing which was heavy struck her arm; glancing at the arm she found it covered in blood. Only then did she see what lay across her bed, eyes glaring into hers, teeth bared in a ferocious snarl: a large dog, with its throat so savagely cut that the head was almost severed from the body. Blood was spreading over the white counterpane. The dead animal had not quite come to rest; rolled over a little, with one red paw raised so that Kate thought with horror, ‘My God, it’s still alive!’
She didn’t know if she had cried out. It was probable that she stood there, staring in disgust and terror for only a few seconds, yet they seemed timeless. Her room was suddenly stifling with the hideous smells of death, blood, incipient decay, excrement. She felt vomit rising in her as she turned to the door … and found she couldn’t open it. For a moment panic, the idea of being locked in with that, blinded her to the obvious fact that she had locked it herself.
She turned the key and fell out into the corridor, mercifully deserted. She wasn’t sure why she locked the door behind her: from force of habit or to distance the horror. Only as she began to move away, fighting nausea, did shock seize her and throw her against one wall where she leaned, shuddering.
The roof-terrace of the house opposite had presented itself to her as an excellent means of escape in case of fire. Anybody, even she herself, could have heaved the dead animal from it and through her window: and probably without the friendly grey-haired woman knowing a thing about it. This was the only certainty her reeling mind could grasp; the rest was darkness streaked with blood. She fought another convulsion of vomit and managed to conquer it.
Again it seemed an age, but was probably a matter of seconds, before she was able to turn and stumble along the corridor towards the stairs; everything seemed to be swimming in and out of focus; the lift stood with open door, waiting for her, but she couldn’t have borne to be imprisoned in that confined space; she ran unsteadily down the six flights to street-level.
The boy behind the desk was no doubt astonished to see her, frantic, blood-smeared, but before he could open his mouth she was pushing through the doors and into the street. She knew exactly where she had to go, it beckoned her with bright lights, l’Oasis. She ran towards it, looking neither to left nor right, and came within a few feet of suffering little Anna’s fate. She burst into the café on a squealing of tyres and a flood of explicit Corsican vituperation.
Shocked faces confronted her, some of them no doubt recalling that other terrible accident. Madame Françoise took one look at the English girl’s expression, the bloody arm, ran out from behind the bar and thrust her past dangling strips of plastic, straight into the tiny office which lay beyond them, at the same time calling out, ‘Anna, cognac!’
She gestured Kate into the only chair, facing an untidy desk, shut the door and leaned on it. ‘For God’s sake, what happened?’
An oblique thought flashed through Kate’s mind that such instant reaction to crisis came naturally to this woman. Algeria must have taught her to act so swiftly and to keep her head in an emergency. She herself seemed unable to find the correct French words, but they evidently sufficed. Staring at her with wide eyes, her handsome face grim, Françoise took the cognac from Anna, shut the door, and pushed the glass into Kate’s hand. She said, ‘Dear Jesus Christ, the Dog! What have you been doing?’
Bemused, Kate replied, ‘Nothing. I mean … really nothing.’
Françoise shook her head decisively. ‘On this island the Dog is not sent for nothing.’