Nine Coaches Waiting

Bernard said something that sounded surly and defensive, and I heard Raoul curse him again. Then the voices faded round the corner of the house. Seconds later the Cadillac's engine started, and her lights swept their circle out of the driveway. The dog was barking once more. Madame Vuathoux must have come out of her cottage at the sound of the second car, for I heard Bernard speak to her, and she answered him in that high, overpitched voice: "He said he'd be here at twelve. Twelve at the latest."

Then Bernard, too, was gone. I lifted my head from the cold plinth and slid an arm round Philippe. I waited for a moment.

Philippe said, with excitement colouring the thin whisper "He's coming at twelve. Did you hear? "

"Yes. I don't suppose it's far off nine now. Only three more hours to wait, mon gars. And they've gone chasing off to Évian."

"He came down the terrace steps. He must have left a window open. Shall we go in?"

I hesitated, then said dully: "No. Only three more hours, Let's play it quite safe and go back and lock ourselves in the boat-house."

The boat-house looked, if possible, rather more dismal than before. Philippe vanished round the back of it and after a minute reappeared with a key which he displayed with a rather wan air of triumph.

"Good for you," I said. "Lead the way, mon lapin."

He went cautiously up the steep outside stair to the loft over the boats. The treads were slippery with moss and none too safe. He bent over the door, and I heard the key grate round in the lock. The door yawned, creaking a little, on a black interior from which came the chill breath of dust and desertion.

"Refuge," I said, with a spurious cheerfulness that probably didn't deceive Philippe at all, and switched on the torch with caution.

The loft, thank heaven, was dry. But that was its only attraction. It was a cheerless little black box of a place, a dusty junk-hole crowded with the abandoned playthings of forgotten summers. I found later that one of the concrete piers of the harbour had a flat platform in its shelter which in happier days made a small private lido. Here in the loft had been carelessly thrust some of the trappings that in July's sunshine were so amusingly gay; striped canvas chairs, a huge folded umbrella of scarlet and dusty orange, various grubby objects which looked as if, well beaten and then inflated, they might be air-cushions, a comical duck, a sausage-like horse with indigo spots… Seen by torchlight in the chilly April dark, with a vigil ahead of us and fear at our elbow, they looked indescribably dreary and grotesque.

There was a small square window low down in the shoreward wall. I propped a canvas chair across it to conceal the torchlight from a possible prowler, then turned to lock the door.

Philippe said dolefully behind me. "What are we going to do till twelve o'clock?"

"Failing Peggitty and chess," I said cheerfully, "sleep. I really don't see why you shouldn't. You must be worn out, and there's nothing now to worry you and keep you awake."

"No," he said a little doubtfully, then his voice lightened. “l shall sleep in the boat."

"Little cabbage, the boat isn't there. Besides, how wet. Now up here," I said falsely, gesturing with the torch towards the dreary pile, "it's much nicer. Perhaps we can find-"

"Here it is." And Philippe had darted past me and was pulling out from under three croquet mallets, a half-deflated beach-ball and a broken oar, a flat yellowish affair that looked like a cyclist's mackintosh.

"What in the wide world-?" I said.

"The boat."

"Oh. Oh, I see. Is it a rubber dinghy? I’ve never seen one.

He nodded and spread his unappetising treasure out on the unoccupied half of the floor. "You blow it up. Here's the tube. You blow into that and the sides come up and it's a boat. I want to sleep in it."

I was too thankful that he had found something to occupy him to object to this harmless whim.

"Why not?" I said. "It's a good solid damp-proof ground- sheet anyway. And after all, who minds a little dust?"

"It's not a ground-sheet. It's a boat." He was already rootling purposefully behind some dirty canvas in a corner.

“Ça se voit,” I said untruthfully, eyeing it.

"You blow it up," explained Philippe patiently, emerging with an unwonted spot of colour in his face, from between an oil-drum and the unspeakable spotted horse.

"Darling, if you think either of us has got enough blow left in them-"

"With this" He was struggling with some heavy-seeming object. I took it from him.

"What is it?"

"A pump. It's easy. I'll show you." He was already down on the floor beside the dismal yellow mass, fitting the nozzle of the pump to the mouth of the tube. I hadn't the heart to dissuade him. Besides… I had been uneasily aware for some minutes now of the bitter little draught that crept under the door and meandered along the boards, cutting at my ankles. Philippe was busy with the footpump, which seemed remarkably easy to work. If the blessed boat really would inflate…

It would. Presently Philippe lifted a face flushed with pride and effort and liberally festooned with cobwebs, from a business-like rubber dinghy whose fat sausage-like sides would certainly stem any wandering draughts. I praised him lavishly, managed to parry offers to blow up the horse, the duck, and the beach-ball as well ("just to show you"), and finally got us both disposed in our draught-proof but decidedly cramped bed, curled up for warmth together in our coats and preparing to sit out the last three hours or so of our ordeal.

The ghastly minutes crawled by. The night was still, held in its pall of mist. I could hear the occasional soft drip of moisture I from the boughs that hung over us, and once some stray current I of air must have stirred the trees, for the budded twigs pawed at the roof. Below in the boat-house the hollow slap and suck of water told of darkness and emptiness and a world of nothing…Compared with this burial in the outer dark last night's lodging had had a snug homely quality that I found myself I remembering-Bernard or no Bernard-with longing.

And it was cold. Philippe seemed warm enough, curled in a ball with his back tucked into the curve of my body and my arms I over him; at any rate, he slept almost straight away. But as I the minutes halted by I could feel the deadly insidious cold creeping through me, bone by bone. It struck first at my exposed I back, then, slowly, slithered through my whole body, as if the blood were literally ru

So I lay and watched the darkness beyond my canvas barrier for a glimpse of light from the villa, and tried not to think, not to think about anything at all.

It was the beach-ball that put an end to the beastly vigil. Disturbed from its winter's rest and moved, I suppose, by some erratic draught, it finally left its place on a pile of boxes and rolled, squashily elliptical in its half-deflated state, off its perch and down onto the floor. It fell on me out of nowhere with a silent, soggy bounce, and jerked me with a yelp out of my stiff, half-dozing vigil. I sat up furiously. Philippe's voice said, sounding scared: "What was that?"

I reached clumsily for the torch. “The beach-ball, confound it. I'm sorry, Philippe. Don't be frightened. Let's have a look at the time…Quarter to twelve." I looked at him. "Are you cold?"

He nodded.

I said: "Let's get out of here, shall we? There's no light up at the villa yet, so I vote we try that terrace window. Only a few minutes more now…”