Caravan to Vaccares

At the foot of the western vertical cliff face of Les Baux lay a very fittingly complementary feature of the landscape which was sombrely and justifiably called the Valley of Hell, partly because the barren desolation of its setting between the battlements of Les Baux to the east and a spur of the Alpilles to the west, partly because in summer time this deeply-sunk gorge, which opened only to the south, could become almost unbearably hot.

But there was one area, right at the northern extremity of this grim cul-de-sac, that was in complete and unbelievably startling contrast to the bleakly forlorn wastes that surrounded it, a green and lovely and luxurious oasis that, in the context, could have been taken straight out of the pages of a fairy-tale book.

It was, in brief, an hotel, an hotel with gratefully tree-lined precincts, exotically designed gardens and a gleamingly blue swimming pool. The gardens lay to the south, the immaculate pool was in the centre, beyond that a large tree-shaded patio and finally the hotel itself with its architectural ancestry apparently stemming from a cross between a Trappist monastery and a Spanish hacienda. It was, in point of fact, one of the best and – almost by definition – one of the most exclusive and expensive hotel-restaurants in Southern Europe: The Hotel Baumanière.

To the right of the patio, approached by a flight of steps, was a very large forecourt and leading off from this to the south, through an archway in a magnificently sculptured hedge, was a large and rectangular parking area, all the parking places being more than adequately shaded from the hot summer sun by closely interwoven wicker-work roofing.

The patio was discreetly illuminated by all but invisible lights hung in the two large trees which dominated most of the area, overhanging the fifteen tables scattered in expensively sophisticated separation across the stone flags. Even the tables were something to behold. The cutlery gleamed. The crockery shone. The crystal glittered. And one did not have to be told that the food was superb, that the Châteauneuf had ambrosia whacked to the wide: the absorbed silence that had fallen upon the entranced diners could be matched only by the reverential hush one finds in the great cathedrals of the world. But even in this gastronomical paradise there existed a discordant note.

This discordant note weighed about 220 pounds and he talked all the time, whether his mouth was full or not. Clearly, he was distracting all the other guests, he’d have distracted them even if they had been falling en masse down the north face of the Eiger. To begin with, his voice was uncommonly loud, but not in the artificial fashion of the nouveau riche or the more impoverished members of the lesser aristocracy who feel it incumbent upon them to call to the attention of the lesser orders of the existence of another and superior strain of Homo sapiens. Here was the genuine article: he didn’t give a damn whether people heard him or not. He was a big man, tall, broad and heavily built: the buttons anchoring the straining folds of his double-breasted dinner-jacket must have been sewn on with piano wire. He had black hair, a black moustache, a neatly-trimmed goatee beard and a black-beribboned monocle through which he was peering closely at the large menu-card in his hand. His table companion was a girl in her mid-twenties, clad in a blue mini-dress and quite extravagantly beautiful in a rather languorous fashion. At that moment she was gazing in mild astonishment at her bearded escort who was clapping his hands imperiously, an action which resulted in the most instantaneous appearance of a dark-jacketed restaurant manager, a white-tied head waiter and a black-tied assistant waiter.

‘Encore,’ said the man with the beard. In retrospect, his gesture of summoning the waiting staff seemed quite superfluous: they could have heard him in the kitchen without any trouble.

‘Of course.’ The restaurant manager bowed. ‘Another entrecôte for the Duc de Croytor. Immediately.’ The head waiter and his assistant bowed in unison, turned and broke into a discreet trot while still less than twelve feet distant. The blonde girl stared at the Duc de Croytor with a bemused expression on her face.

‘But, Monsieur le Duc –’

‘Charles to you,’ the Duc de Croytor interrupted firmly. ‘Titles do not impress me even although hereabouts I’m referred to as Le Grand Duc, no doubt because of my impressive girth, my impressive appetite and my viceregal manner of dealing with the lower orders. But Charles to you, Lila, my dear.’

The girl, clearly embarrassed, said something in a low voice which apparently her companion couldn’t hear for he lost no time in letting his ducal impatience show through.

‘Speak up, speak up! Bit deaf in this ear, you know.’

She spoke up. ‘I mean – you’ve just had an enormous entrecôte steak.’

‘One never knows when the years of famine will strike,’ Le Grand Duc said gravely. ‘Think of Egypt. Ah!’

An impressively escorted head waiter placed a huge steak before him with all the ritual solemnity of the presentation of crown jewels except that, quite clearly, both the waiter and Le Grand Duc obviously regarded the entrecôte as having the edge on such empty baubles any time. An assistant waiter set down a large ashet of creamed potatoes and another of vegetables while yet another waiter reverently placed an ice bucket containing two bottles of rosé on a serving table close by.

‘Bread for Monsieur le Duc?’ the restaurant manager enquired.

‘You know very well I’m on a diet.’ He spoke as if he meant it, too, then, clearly as an after-thought, turned to the blonde girl. ‘Perhaps Mademoiselle Delafont –’

‘I couldn’t possibly.’ As the waiters left she gazed in fascination at his plate. ‘In twenty seconds –’

‘They know my little ways,’ Le Grand Duc mumbled. It is difficult to speak clearly when one’s mouth is full of entrecôte steak.

‘And I don’t.’ Lila Delafont looked at him speculatively. I don’t know, for instance, why you should invite me –’

‘Apart from the fact that no one ever denies Le Grand Duc anything, four reasons.’ When you’re a Duke you can interrupt without apology. He drained about half a pint of wine and his enunciation improved noticeably. ‘As I say, one never knows when the years of famine will strike.’ He eyed her appreciatively so that she shouldn’t miss his point. ‘I knew – I know – your father, the Count Delafont well – my credentials are impeccable. You are the most beautiful girl in sight. And you are alone.’

Lila, clearly embarrassed, lowered her voice, but it was no good. By this time the other diners clearly regarded it as lèse-majesté to indulge in any conversation themselves while the Duc de Croytor was holding the floor, and the silence was pretty impressive.

‘I’m not alone. Nor the most beautiful girl in sight. Neither.’ She smiled apologetically, as if afraid she had been overheard, and nodded in the direction of a near-by table. ‘Not while my friend Cecile Dubois is here.’

‘The girl you were with earlier this evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘My ancestors and I have always preferred blondes.’ His tone left little room for doubt that brunettes were for the plebs only. Reluctantly, he laid down his knife and fork and peered sideways. ‘Passable, passable, I must say.’ He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper that couldn’t have been heard more than twenty feet away. ‘Your friend, you say. Then who’s that dissipated-looking layabout with her?’

Seated at a table about ten feet away and clearly well within earshot of Le Grand Duc, a man removed his horn-rimmed glasses and folded them with an air of finality: he was conservatively and expensively dressed in grey gaberdine, was tall, broad-shouldered, black-haired and just escaped being handsome because of the slightly battered irregularity of his deeply tanned face. The girl opposite him, tall, dark, smiling and with amusement in her green eyes, put a restraining hand on his wrist.

‘Please, Mr Bowman. It’s not worth it, is it? Really?’

Bowman looked into the smiling face and subsided. ‘I am strongly tempted, Miss Dubois, strongly tempted.’ He reached for his wine but his hand stopped half-way. He heard Lila’s voice, disapproving, defensive.

‘He looks more like a heavy-weight boxer to me.’

Bowman smiled at Cecile Dubois and raised his glass.

‘Indeed.’ Le Grand Duc quaffed another half goblet of rosé. ‘One about twenty years past his prime.’

Wine spilled on the table as Bowman set down his glass with a force that should have shattered the delicate crystal. He rose abruptly to his feet, only to find that Cecile, in addition to all her other obviously fine points, was possessed of a set of excellent reflexes. She was on her feet as quickly as he was, had insinuated herself between Bowman and Le Grand Duc’s table, took his arm and urged him gently but firmly in the direction of the swimming pool: they looked for all the world like a couple who had just finished dinner and decided to go for a stroll for the digestion’s sake. Bowman, though with obvious reluctance, went along with this. He had about him the air of a man for whom the creation of a disturbance with Le Grand Duc would have been a positive pleasure but who drew the line at having street brawls with young ladies.

‘I’m sorry.’ She squeezed his arm. ‘But Lila is my friend. I didn’t want her embarrassed.’

‘Ha! You didn’t want her embarrassed. Doesn’t matter, I suppose, how embarrassed I am?’

‘Oh, come on. Just sticks and stones, you know. You really don’t look the least little bit dissipated to me.’ Bowman stared at her suspiciously, but there was no malicious amusement in her eyes: she was pursing her lips in mock but friendly seriousness. ‘Mind you, I can see that not everyone would like to be called a layabout. By the way, what do you do? Just in case I have to defend you to the Dulce – verbally, that is.’

‘Hell with the Duke.’

‘That’s not an answer to my question.’

‘And a very good question it is too.’ Bowman paused reflectively, took off his glasses and polished them. ‘Fact is, I don’t do anything.’

They were now at the farther end of the pool. Cecile took her hand away from his arm and looked at him without any marked enthusiasm.

‘DO you mean to tell me, Mr Bowman –’

‘Call me Neil. All my friends do.’

‘You make friends very easily, don’t you?’ she asked with inconsequential illogic.

‘I’m like that,’ Bowman said simply.

She wasn’t listening or, if she was, she ignored him. ‘Do you mean to tell me you never work? You never do anything!’

‘Never.’

‘You’ve no job?’ You’ve been trained for nothing? You can’t do anything?’

‘Why should I spin and toil?’ Bowman said reasonably. ‘My old man’s made millions. Still making them, come to that. Every other generation should take it easy, don’t you think – a sort of recharging of the family batteries. Besides, I don’t need a job. Far be it from me,’ he finished piously, ‘to deprive some poor fellow who really needs it.’

‘Of all the specious arguments … How could I have misjudged a man like that?’

‘People are always misjudging me,’ Bowman said sadly.

‘Not you. The Duke. His perception.’ She shook her head, but in a way that looked curiously more like an exasperated affection than cold condemnation. ‘You really are an idle layabout, Mr Bowman.’

‘Neil.’

‘Oh, you’re incorrigible.’ For the first time, irritation.

‘And envious.’ Bowman took her arm as they approached the patio again and because he wasn’t smiling she made no attempt to remove it. ‘Envious of you. Your spirit, I mean. Your yearlong economy and thrift. For you two English girls to be able to struggle by here at £200 a week each on your typists’ salaries or whatever –’

‘Lila Delafont and I are down here to gather material for a book.’ She tried to be stiff but it didn’t become her.

‘On what?’ Bowman asked politely. ‘Provençal cookery? Publishers don’t pay that kind of speculative advance money. So who picks up the tab? Unesco? The British Council?’ Bowman peered at her closely through his horn-rimmed glasses but clearly she wasn’t the lip-biting kind. ‘Let’s all pay a silent tribute to good old Daddy, shall we? A truce, my dear. This is too good to spoil. Beautiful night, beautiful food, beautiful girl.’ Bowman adjusted his spectacles and surveyed the patio. ‘Your girl-friend’s not bad either. Who’s the slim Jim with her?’

She didn’t answer at once, probably because she was momentarily hypnotized by the spectacle of Le Grand Duc holding an enormous balloon glass of rosé in one hand while with the other he directed the activities of a waiter who appeared to be transferring the contents of the dessert trolley on to the plate before him. Lila Delafont’s mouth had fallen slightly open.

‘I don’t know. He says he’s a friend of her father.’ She looked away with some difficulty, saw and beckoned the passing restaurant manager. ‘Who’s the gentleman with my friend?’

The Duc de Croytor, madam. A very famous winegrower.’

‘A very famous wine-drinker, more like.’ Bowman ignored Cecile’s disapproving look. ‘Does he come here often?’

‘For the past three years at this time.’

‘The food is especially good at this time!’

‘The food, sir, is superb here at any time.’ The Baumaniere’s manager wasn’t amused. ‘Monsieur le Duc comes for the annual gypsy festival at Saintes-Maries.’

Bowman peered at the Duc de Croytor again. He was spooning down his dessert with a relish matched only by his speed of operation.

‘You can see why he has to have an ice-bucket,’ Bowman observed. ‘To cool down his cutlery. Don’t see any signs of gypsy blood there.’

‘Monsieur le Duc is one of the foremost folklorists in Europe,’ the manager said severely, adding with a suave side-swipe: ‘The study of ancient customs, Mr Bowman. For centuries, now, the gypsies have come from all over Europe, at the end of May, to worship and venerate the relics of Sara, their patron saint. Monsieur le Duc is writing a book about it.’

‘This place,’ Bowman said, ‘is hotching with the most unlikely authors you ever saw.’

‘I do not understand, sir.’

I understand all right.’ The green eyes, Bowman observed, could also be very cool. ‘There’s no need – what on earth is that?’

The at first faint then gradually swelling sound of many engines in low gear sounded like a tank regiment on the move. They glanced down towards the forecourt as the first of many gypsy caravans came grinding up the steeply winding slope towards the hotel. Once in the forecourt the leading caravans began arranging themselves in neat rows round the perimeter while others passed through the archway in the hedge towards the parking lot beyond. The racket, and the stench of diesel and petrol fumes, while not exactly indescribable or unsupportable, were in marked contrast to the peaceful luxury of the hotel and disconcerting to a degree, this borne out by the fact that Le Grand Duc had momentarily stopped eating. Bowman looked at the restaurant manager, who was gazing up at the stars and obviously communing with himself.

‘Monsieur le Duc’s raw material?’Bowman asked.

‘Indeed, sir.’

‘And now? Entertainment? Gypsy violin music? Street roulette? Shooting galleries? Candy stalls? Palm reading?’

‘I’m afraid so, sir.’

‘My God!’

Cecile said distinctly: ‘Snob!’

‘I fear, madam,’ the restaurant manager said distantly, ‘that my sympathies lie with Mr Bowman. But it is an ancient custom and we have no wish to offend either the gypsies or the local people.’ He looked down at the forecourt again and frowned. ‘Excuse me, please.’

He hurried down the steps and made his way across the forecourt to where a group of gypsies appeared to be arguing heatedly. The main protagonists appeared to be a powerfully built hawk-faced gypsy in his middle forties and a clearly distraught and very voluble gypsy woman of the same age who seemed to be very close to tears.

‘Coming?’ Bowman asked Cecile.

‘What! Down there?’

‘Snob!’

‘But you said –’

‘Idle layabout I may be but I’m a profound student of human nature.’

‘You mean you’re nosey?’

‘Yes.’

Bowman took her reluctant arm and made to move off, then stepped courteously to one side to permit the passage of a bustling Le Grand Due, if a man of his build could be said to bustle, followed by a plainly reluctant Lila. He carried a notebook and had what looked to be a folklorist’s gleam in his eye. But bent though he was on the pursuit of knowledge he hadn’t forgotten to fortify himself with a large red apple at which he was munching away steadily. Le Grand Duc looked like the sort of man who would always get his priorities right.

Bowman, a hesitant Cecile beside him, followed rather more leisurely. When they were half way down the steps a jeep was detached from the leading caravan, three men piled aboard and the jeep took off down the hill at speed. As Bowman and the girl approached the knot of people where the gypsy was vainly trying to calm the now sobbing woman, the restaurant manager broke away from them and hurried towards the steps. Bowman barred his way.

‘What’s up?’

‘Woman says her son has disappeared. They’ve sent a search party back along the road.’

‘Oh?’ Bowman removed his glasses. ‘But people don’t disappear just like that.’

‘That’s what I say. That’s why I’m calling the police.’

He hurried on his way. Cecile, who had followed Bowman without any great show of enthusiam, said: ‘What’s all the fuss! Why is that woman crying?’

‘Her son’s disappeared.’

‘And?’

‘That’s all.’

‘You mean that nothing’s happened to him?’

‘Not that anyone seems to know.’

‘There could be a dozen reasons. Surely she doesn’t have to carry on like that.’

‘Gypsies,’ Bowman said by way of explanation. ‘Very emotional. Very attached to their offspring. Do you have any children!’

She wasn’t as calmly composed as she looked. Even ih the lamplight it wasn’t difficult to see the red touching her cheeks. She said: ‘That wasn’t fair.’

Bowman blinked, looked at her and said: ‘No, it wasn’t. Forgive me. I didn’t mean it that way. If you had kids and one was missing, would you react like that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I said I was sorry.’

‘I’d be worried, of course.’ She wasn’t a person who could maintain anger or resentment for more than a fleeting moment of time. ‘Maybe I’d be worried stiff. But I wouldn’t be so – so violently grief-stricken, so hysterical, well not unless –’

‘Unless what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean, if I’d reason to believe that – that –’

‘Yes?’

‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’

‘I’ll never know what women mean,’ Bowman said sadly, ‘but this time I can guess.’

They moved on and literally bumped into Le Grand Duc and Lila. The girls spoke and introductions, Bowman saw, were inevitable and in order. Le Grand Duc shook his hand and said, ‘Charmed, charmed,’ but it was plain to see that he wasn’t in the least bit charmed, it was just that the aristocracy knew how to behave. He hadn’t, Bowman noted, the soft flabby hand one might have expected: the hand was hard and the grip that of a strong man carefully not exerting too much pressure.

‘Fascinating,’ he announced. He addressed himself exclusively to the two girls. ‘Do you know that all those gypsies have come from the far side of the Iron Curtain? Hungarian or Rumanian, most of them. Their leader, fellow called Czerda – met him last year, that’s him with that woman there – has come all the way from the Black Sea.’

‘But how about frontiers?’ Bowman asked. ‘Especially between East and West.’

‘Eh? What? Ah?’ He finally became aware of Bowman’s presence. ‘They travel without let or hindrance, most of all when people know that they are on their annual pilgrimage. Everyone fears them, thinks that they have the evil eye, that they put spells and curses on those who offend them: the Communists believe it as much as anyone, more, for all I know. Nonsense, of course, sheer balderdash. But it’s what people believe that matters. Come, Lila, come. I have the feeling that they are going to prove in a most co-operative mood tonight.’

They moved off. After a few paces the Duke stopped and glanced round. He looked in their direction for some time, then turned away, shaking his head. ‘A pity,’ he said to Lila in what he probably imagined to be sotto voce, ‘about the colour of her hair.’ They moved on.

‘Never mind,’ Bowman said kindly. ‘I like you as you are.’ She compressed her lips, then laughed. Grudges were not for Cecile Dubois.

‘He’s right, you know.’ She took his arm, all was forgiven, and when Bowman was about to point out that the Duke’s convictions about the intrinsic superiority of blonde hair did not carry with it the stamp of divine infallibility, she went on, gesturing around her: ‘It really is quite fascinating.’

‘If you like the atmosphere of circuses and fairgrounds,’ Bowman said fastidiously, ‘both of which I will go a long way to avoid, I suppose it is. But I admire experts.’

And that the gypsies were unquestionably experts at the particular task on hand was undeniable. The speed and coordinated skill with which they assembled their various stalls and other media of entertainment were remarkable. Within minutes and ready for operation they had assembled roulette stands, a shooting gallery, no fewer than four fortune-tellers’ booths, a food stall, a candy stall, two clothing stalls selling brilliantly-hued gypsy clothes and, oddly enough, a large cage of mynah birds clearly possessed of that species’ usual homicidal outlook on life. A group of four gypsies, perched on the steps of a caravan, began to play soulful mid-European music on their violins. Aready the areas of the forecourt and car-park were almost uncomfortably full of scores of people circulating slowly around, guests from the hotel, guests, one supposed, from other hotels, villagers from Les Baux, a good number of gypsies themselves. As variegated a cross-section of humanity as one could hope to find, they shared, for the moment, what appeared to be a marked unanimity of outlook – all, from Le Grand Duc downwards, were clearly enjoying themselves with the noteable exception of the restaurant manager who stood on the top of the forecourt steps surveying the scene with the broken-hearted despair and martyred resignation of a Bing watching the Metropolitan being taken over by a hippie festival.

A policeman appeared at the entrance to the forecourt. He was large and red and perspiring freely, and clearly regarded the pushing of ancient bicycles up precipitous roads as a poor way of spending a peacefully warm May evening. He propped his bicycle against a wall just as the sobbing gypsy woman put her hands to her face, turned and ran towards a green-and-white painted caravan.

Bowman nudged Cecile. ‘Let’s just saunter over there and join them, shall we?’

‘I will not. It’s rude. Besides, gypsies don’t like people who pry.’

‘Prying? Since when is concern about a missing man prying? But suit yourself.’

As Bowman moved off the jeep returned, skidding to an unnecessary if highly dramatic stop on the gravel of the court. The young gypsy at the wheel jumped out and ran towards Czerda and the policeman. Bowman wasn’t far behind, halting a discreet number of feet away.

‘No luck, Ferenc?’ Czerda asked.

‘No sign anywhere, Father. We searched all the area.’

The policeman had a black notebook out. ‘Where was he last seen?’

‘Less than a kilometre back, according to his mother,’ Czerda said. ‘We stopped for our evening meal not far from the caves.’

The policeman asked Ferenc: ‘You searched in there?’

Ferenc crossed himself and remained silent. Czerda said: ‘That’s no question to ask and you know it. No gypsy would ever enter those caves. They have an evil reputation. Alexandre – that’s the name of the missing boy – would never have gone there.’