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What a good thing, thought Richard. What a relief.
Ben slept until they landed and people were getting off. Ben was dazed and it seemed he hardly knew who Richard was. He forgot the precious case when the time came to stand up and pull it down. Richard hauled it down for him, and carried it all the way to the luggage carousel. Almost at once the great black bag appeared — the dangerous one — and then the red one, with Ben's things in it.
'When are we going on the plane?' asked Ben. He had expected something like the trip he had made with Johnston over London in the little plane.
Richard did not answer: ahead was the last hazard, Customs, but they were not bothering. In a moment the two were out in the sunshine, and then, with the bags, in a taxi. Richard was sitting back in his seat, eyes closed, still shaking with the terror of it all. He knew very well that it was only luck that had saved them even while he thought admiringly of Johnston. He wanted badly to sleep: he understood why Ben had gone to sleep, from strain, on the plane. During that ride, Ben was silent. For one thing, his eyes hurt, because of the glitter of the sun on the sea — he did not at first understand that great scoop of shining blue, which was nothing like the seaside at home. He felt sick, too: he hated cars, he always had. Then they were on a pavement, with people everywhere, and Richard led Ben to a table where he sat, pushing a chair towards him. Ben sat, as if this might be a trap, and the chair could close around him like jaws. It was mid-afternoon. They were under a little umbrella but the tiny patch of shade did not do much for Ben's painful eyes. He sat with them half-closed. The waiter came: coffee for Richard, but Ben wanted orange juice, he hated coffee. Cakes came, but Ben never did like cake much, so Richard ate them. And there they sat, hardly talking, Ben trying to take in what he could of the glitter and clamour of the scene around him through half-closed eyes. It was a busy street, and a busy cafe, and no one was taking any notice of them. Then, suddenly, a man appeared by the table, and Richard said to him, 'The black one and the blue one.' Ben watched as this person, an apparition composed of bright light and noise, disappeared towards a taxi with the two cases. Only Ben and Richard watched. No one else, whether idling on the pavement, or sitting at the cafe tables, or driving past, so much as glanced at the two cases, one very large, one of an ordinary size, whose contents would soon be added to the rivers of poison that circulate everywhere in the world. Ben was confused. He had thought the blue one, that he had carried through the machines and the officials, was his, but it seemed not. This red one was his. And there was something else that he was at last just begi
English and look after him — but he had not known that he was going to sit at a table in this foreign country understanding nothing, but nothing, of what was going on around him. And that man, the one who had gone off with the bags, had understood Richard talking English, but to the taxi driver he had spoken in French. Exhaustion was numbing Ben again.
'And so that's that,' said Richard, and he had to say it, to mark or define the accomplishment of the deed, but he knew Ben had no idea of what had happened.
'I'm going to take you to the hotel,' he said to Ben.
A lot of discussion had gone into the choice of hotel. Rita had said, a cheap one, where people are friendly — meaning herself. Johnston had said, 'No, a good hotel. They'll speak English. In a cheap hotel they'll only speak French.'
'He won't know how to cope with a good hotel,' said Rita, but she was wrong. It all went brilliantly. Ben had only to sign his name at the hotel desk, while people smiled at him, because he was a film star, and then followed by smiles he was led to a lift by Richard. He hesitated there because of his fear of lifts, but Richard pushed him into it, and it was only two floors, no more than a moment. In his room he was at once at ease, because it reminded him of his childhood, his home. So much was this so that he looked at the window to see if there were bars. Then he went to them, to look out: much lower down than the windows of Mrs Biggs' flat in Mimosa House, Halley Street. He strolled about the room, the grin gone from his face, and Richard, slumped into a chair, watching, knew that everything was going to be easy. All he had to do was show Ben the bathroom and how the shower worked, and the air conditioning. Then he said that he must go, but he would be back soon to take Ben to supper.
He left Ben sitting in a chair looking up through open windows at a blue, hot sky.
He telephoned Johnston, but only said, 'It's OK — yes, it's all right.'
Johnston heard this, and at once ran up Rita's stairs to tell her, and went off into fantasies of doing it all again: he would fetch Ben back, and repeat the triumph. But Rita brought him down to earth. 'Stop it, Johnston. You've got away with it this time.'
When Richard returned, Ben was splashing and shouting in the shower, apparently quite happy, but the first thing he said, as he came out to dry himself and get dressed, was, 'When can I go back home?'
Richard took him to a proper restaurant, mostly because he wanted to eat well for once: he was having a thin time of it. But he might just as well have gone to a McDonald's. Ben would only drink juice, and, saying he was hungry, ate a big steak, leaving the frites and the salad, and then wanted another. Afterwards Richard took him strolling along the front, to look at the sea, then another cafe, then to an evening show with dancing and singing. Richard could not make out what Ben thought of it all: he agreed to everything but only when he was eating seemed to show real enjoyment.
At the hotel Richard counted some money into Ben's hand, and said, 'You won't need it, but in case. And I'll be here early tomorrow.' His orders were to see that Ben could manage ordinary day-to-day things. Then he took a big packet of money down to the hotel safe, and checked it, in Ben's name, for he knew, from watching Ben's unobservant ways, that if he carried that money, thieves would have had it all off him in a day.
Richard's programme for keeping Ben amused was really arranged for himself: that was why he hired a car to take Ben on a trip to the hilltowns behind Nice. But Ben was sick, and when they reached some charming little square or restaurant, did not want to sit outside; he looked for shade, and even then kept his eyes closed most of the time. It was clear that he had to have dark glasses, and so back in Nice he tried some on but none seemed right. Richard took him to a proper oculist who, on examining Ben's eyes, seemed uneasy, even incredulous, and asked a good many questions. He said it was difficult to prescribe for eyes he described as 'unusual', but at last Ben did say he liked a pair. Now, with the glasses, he drew even more stares and, fidgeting and uneasy, kept saying, 'Somewhere else. Not here. I don't like it here.'
Then, as they walked towards their reflections in a shop window, he stopped, bent forward, looking at himself. 'No eyes,' he said, in explanation. 'No eyes. My eyes have gone.' And he panicked, taking off his glasses. 'But Ben, look at me, then I've got no eyes as well.' And Richard whipped off his sunglasses, showing Ben his eyes, and put them back on. Ben slowly replaced his. But stood looking at himself. What he was seeing was very different from anything he could have seen in London: that smart linen jacket, his hair, and now, his blacked-out eyes.