House of the Hanged

‘You mean big sister can’t boss them around any more?’

‘Exactly! The wilful little brutes.’

Le Lavandou, with its palm-fringed promenade and its port backed by a huddle of old buildings, still felt like a frontier town to Tom. Although he visited it often, it lay at the western limits of his ordinary beat and he rarely ventured beyond it. Whenever he did so, returning there was like returning home, even if home still lay a good few miles to the east along the twisting shoreline of the Côte des Maures.

The table was waiting for them under the awning at the Café du Centre, and Pascal appeared within moments of their arrival bearing a bottle of white Burgundy on ice. Nothing had been left to chance. The table, the wine, even the fish they would eat, all had been chosen in advance by Tom when he’d passed through earlier that morning. He wanted the build-up to the big surprise to be perfect.

Pascal was one of the few people in on the secret and he was obviously determined to play his part to perfection. Like a child sworn to silence, though, the burden proved almost too much to bear.

As soon as he had disappeared back inside, Lucy lit a cigarette and enquired, ‘What’s wrong with Pascal? He keeps looking at you in a funny way.’

‘Really?’

‘All weird and wide-eyed.’

‘Maybe it’s lack of sleep. Their new baby’s only a few weeks old.’

This seemed to satisfy her; besides, they had better things to discuss. It was almost six months since they’d last seen each other – during one of Tom’s rare visits to England – and on that occasion there’d been little opportunity to talk openly. In fact, there’d been little opportunity to talk at all, because Lucy’s great friend, Stella, had muscled in on their lunch at the Randolph Hotel. Like Lucy, Stella was a second-year Modern History undergraduate at St Hugh’s College. Unlike Lucy, she seemed to think this entitled her to hold forth at length on any subject that happened to pop into her head. And there was certainly no shortage of those: everything from the worrying rise of Fascism to the latest fashions in women’s shoes. In her defence, Stella was well informed and extremely amusing with it, but Tom could still recall the delightful silence of the long drive back to London from Oxford.

‘How’s the irrepressible Stella bearing up?’

‘Oh, dear,’ sighed Lucy. ‘Poor Stella . . .’

‘What? She’s developed lockjaw?’

‘Worse. She’s gone totally potty on an Irish labourer.’

‘You’re joking!’

Apparently not. St Hugh’s was in the process of putting up a new library, and the college had been crawling with brawny workmen for much of the year, one of whom had caught Stella’s eye.

‘Nothing’s happened,’ Lucy explained. ‘I mean, I’m not sure he even knows she exists, but she spent most of last term moping around her rooms like a sick cat. It’s all very Lady Chatterley and Mellors.’

‘What would you know about Lady Chatterley and Mellors? That’s a banned book.’

‘Which is precisely the reason there are so many copies doing the rounds at university.’

‘As the man who took an oath before God to lead you towards a life of exemplary purpose, I’m disappointed.’

‘As the man who had Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer lying around his house last summer, don’t be.’

‘Ah, it’s not banned in France.’

‘Well, it should be.’

‘Oh God, you didn’t read it, did you?’

‘Of course I did, the day you all went off to St Tropez.’

‘Ah yes . . .’ said Tom, remembering now, ‘the day you were struck down with a bad headache.’

‘A little trick I learnt from Mother.’ Lucy tapped the ash from her cigarette on to the cobbles at their feet. ‘How is she, by the way?’

‘Eager to see you.’

‘You really must learn to lie more convincingly.’

‘Well, I now know who to turn to for lessons, don’t I?’

They had been sparring partners for as long as he could remember, ever since Lucy was a small child. With the passage of time, the tickling and romping and mock fights of those early years had been replaced by a battle of wits and a war of words. Tom had always encouraged the playful cut-and-thrust of their relationship, if only because there had never been much of that sort of thing at home for Lucy. Venetia, for all her ‘modern ways’, was a mother cast in a traditional mould, somewhat cold and remote. As for Leonard, when not submerged in his work at the Foreign Office he leaned far more naturally towards his two sons than to the dead man’s daughter whom Venetia had brought with her into the marriage.

Tom no longer feared for Lucy’s emotional well-being. She had blossomed into something quite extraordinary: a beautiful, intelligent and amusing young woman who seemed genuinely oblivious of her manifest charms. And if he still sought out her company whenever he could, it was as much for his own benefit as hers, for what she somehow managed to bring out in him. As the conversation continued to coil effortlessly around them over lunch, she was, it occurred to him, one of the few true friends he had in the world.

When the coffee arrived they carried their cups with them to a wooden bench just across the cobbles from their table. Here, in the drowsy shade of the plane trees, they sat and watched in reverential silence as four old men, tanned to the colour of teak, played boules.

‘Let’s go for a wander,’ suggested Tom, the moment the match was over.

He led her across the road to the port. On one side of the central quay were moored colourful wooden fishing yawls, one of which had landed their lunch much earlier that day, while the rest of the world was still sleeping. Being a fanatical sailor, Lucy was far more interested in the array of yachts and dinghies bobbing on the gentle swell across the way. They came in all shapes and sizes – there was even an ostentatious gentle-man’s cabin launch amongst them – but her eye was drawn to one sailboat in particular.

‘Oh my goodness, look at that!’

‘What?’

‘That racing sloop.’

‘Yes, pleasing on the eye.’

‘I bet she flies.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Tom. ‘She looks like she’s sitting a little too low in the water.’

‘That’s to fool idiots like you. I’m telling you, she flies.’

‘Well, let’s find out, shall we?’

He leapt from the quayside on to the varnished fore-deck, turning in time to see Lucy’s look of incredulity give way to realization.

‘Don’t tell me, the royalties on your last book came through.’

Tom was on the point of revealing all – this was exactly as he had imagined it happening – but he held himself in check. ‘Something like that.’

Lucy kicked off her shoes and joined him on the foredeck, barely able to contain her excitement. ‘She’s not French. Where’s she from? Where did you find her? What’s she called?’

‘No . . . Sweden . . . Marseilles . . . Albatross.’

‘Albatross – I told you she flies! What is she, thirty feet?’

‘Twenty-eight.’