CHAPTER 25
‘BLACK-PATCH’
As he walked quietly from the terrace into the half-darkness of the still shuttered dining-room, he was surprised to see Vesper emerge from the glass-fronted telephone booth near the front door and softly turn up the stairs towards their rooms.
‘Vesper,’ he called, thinking she must have had some urgent message which might concern them both.
She turned quickly, a hand up to her mouth.
For a moment longer than necessary she stared at him, her eyes wide.
‘What is it, darling?’ he asked, vaguely troubled and fearing some crisis in their lives.
‘Oh,’ she said breathlessly, ‘you made me jump. It was only . . . I was just telephoning to Mathis. To Mathis,’ she repeated. ‘I wondered if he could get me another frock. You know, from that girl-friend I told you about. The vendeuse. You see,’ she talked quickly, her words coming out in a persuasive jumble, ‘I’ve really got nothing to wear. I thought I’d catch him at home before he went to the office. I don’t know my friend’s telephone number and I thought it would be a surprise for you. I didn’t want you to hear me moving and wake you up. Is the water nice? Have you bathed? You ought to have waited for me.’
‘It’s wonderful,’ said Bond, deciding to relieve her mind, though irritated with her obvious guilt over this childish mystery. ‘You must go in and we’ll have breakfast on the terrace. I’m ravenous. I’m sorry I made you jump. I was just startled to see anyone about at this hour of the morning.’
He put his arm round her, but she disengaged herself, and moved quickly on up the stairs.
‘It was such a surprise to see you,’ she said, trying to cover the incident up with a light touch. ‘You looked like a ghost, a drowned man, with the hair down over your eyes like that.’ She laughed harshly. Hearing the harshness, she turned the laugh into a cough.
‘I hope I haven’t caught cold,’ she said.
She kept on patching up the edifice of her deceit until Bond wanted to spank her and tell her to relax and tell the truth. Instead he just gave her a reassuring pat on the back outside her room and told her to hurry up and have her bathe.
Then he went on to his room.
That was the end of the integrity of their love. The succeeding days were a shambles of falseness and hypocrisy, mingled with her tears and moments of animal passion to which she abandoned herself with a greed made indecent by the hollowness of their days.
Several times Bond tried to break down the dreadful walls of mistrust. Again and again he brought up the subject of the telephone call, but she obstinately bolstered up her story with embellishments which Bond knew she had thought out afterwards. She even accused Bond of thinking she had another lover.
These scenes always ended in her bitter tears and in moments almost of hysteria.
Each day the atmosphere became more hateful.
It seemed fantastic to Bond that human relationships could collapse into dust overnight and he searched his mind again and again for a reason.
He felt that Vesper was just as horrified as he was and, if anything, her misery seemed greater than his. But the mystery of the telephone conversation which Vesper angrily, almost fearfully it seemed to Bond, refused to explain was a shadow which grew darker with other small mysteries and reticences.
Already at luncheon on that day things got worse.
After a breakfast which was an effort for both of them, Vesper said she had a headache and would stay in her room out of the sun. Bond took a book and walked for miles down the beach. By the time he returned he had argued to himself that they would be able to sort the problem out over lunch.
Directly they sat down, he apologized gaily for having startled her at the telephone booth and then he dismissed the subject and went on to describe what he had seen on his walk. But Vesper was distrait and commented only in monosyllables. She toyed with her food and she avoided Bond’s eyes and gazed past him with an air of preoccupation.
When she had failed once or twice to respond to some conversational gambit or other, Bond also relapsed into silence and occupied himself with his own gloomy thoughts.
All of a sudden she stiffened. Her fork fell with a clatter on to the edge of her plate and then noisily off the table on to the terrace.
Bond looked up. She had gone as white as a sheet and she was looking over his shoulder with terror in her face.
Bond turned his head and saw that a man had just taken his place at a table on the opposite side of the terrace, well away from them. He seemed ordinary enough, perhaps rather sombrely dressed, but in his first quick glance Bond put him down as some business-man on his way along the coast who had just happened on the inn or had picked it out of the Michelin.
‘What is it, darling?’ he asked anxiously.
Vesper’s eyes never moved from the distant figure.
‘It’s the man in the car,’ she said in a stifled voice. ‘The man who was following us. I know it is.’
Bond looked again over his shoulder. The patron was discussing the menu with the new customer. It was a perfectly normal scene. They exchanged smiles over some item on the menu and apparently agreed that it would suit for the patron took the card and with, Bond guessed, a final exchange about the wine, he withdrew.
The man seemed to realize that he was being watched. He looked up and gazed incuriously at them for a moment. Then he reached for a brief-case on the chair beside him, extracted a newspaper and started to read it, his elbows propped up on the table.
When the man had turned his face towards them, Bond noticed that he had a black patch over one eye. It was not tied with a tape across the eye, but screwed in like a monocle. Otherwise he seemed a friendly middle-aged man, with dark brown hair brushed straight back, and, as Bond had seen while he was talking to the patron, particularly large, white teeth.
He turned back to Vesper. ‘Really, darling. He looks very innocent. Are you sure he’s the same man? We can’t expect to have this place entirely to ourselves.’
Vesper’s face was still a white mask. She was clutching the edge of the table with both hands. He thought she was going to faint and almost rose to come round to her, but she made a gesture to stop him. Then she reached for a glass of wine and took a deep draught. The glass rattled on her teeth and she brought up her other hand to help. Then she put the glass down.
She looked at him with dull eyes.
‘I know it’s the same.’
He tried to reason with her, but she paid no attention. After glancing once or twice over his shoulder with eyes that held a curious submissiveness, she said that her headache was still bad and that she would spend the afternoon in her room. She left the table and walked indoors without a backward glance.
Bond was determined to set her mind at rest. He ordered coffee to be brought to the table and then he rose and walked swiftly to the courtyard. The black Peugeot which stood there might indeed have been the saloon they had seen, but it might equally have been one of a million others on the French roads. He took a quick glance inside, but the interior was empty and when he tried the boot, it was locked. He made a note of the Paris number-plate then he went quickly to the lavatory adjoining the dining-room, pulled the chain and walked out on to the terrace.
The man was eating and didn’t look up.
Bond sat down in Vesper’s chair so that he could watch the other table.
A few minutes later the man asked for the bill, paid it and left. Bond heard the Peugeot start up and soon the noise of its exhaust had disappeared in the direction of the road to Royale.
When the patron came back to his table, Bond explained that Madame had unfortunately a slight touch of sunstroke. After the patron had expressed his regret and enlarged on the dangers of going out of doors in almost any weather, Bond casually asked about the other customer. ‘He reminds me of a friend who also lost an eye. They wear similar black patches.’
The patron answered that the man was a stranger. He had been pleased with his lunch and had said that he would be passing that way again in a day or two and would take another meal at the auberge. Apparently he was Swiss, which could also be seen from his accent. He was a traveller in watches. It was shocking to have only one eye. The strain of keeping that patch in place all day long. He supposed one got used to it.
‘It is indeed very sad,’ said Bond. ‘You also have been unlucky,’ he gestured to the proprietor’s empty sleeve. ‘I myself was very fortunate.’
For a time they talked about the war. Then Bond rose.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘Madame had an early telephone call which I must remember to pay for. Paris. An Elysée number I think,’ he added, remembering that that was Mathis’s exchange.
‘Thank you, monsieur, but the matter is regulated. I was speaking to Royale this morning and the exchange mentioned that one of my guests had put through a call to Paris and that there had been no answer. They wanted to know if Madame would like the call kept in. I’m afraid the matter escaped my mind. Perhaps Monsieur would mention it to Madame. But, let me see, it was an Invalides number the exchange referred to.’