Read Online The Avignon Quintet by Lawrence Durrell - Free Book Online

far. But naturally such a decision, as well as its causes, are very hard to explain or justify to family retainers whose doglike devotion and trust were completely unreasoning. He was aware of the anxiety his announcement would cause. But it had to be so, for he proposed to appoint one of the older servants as steward of the estate in the hope that he might hold his ground at home while he himself was absent on duty abroad. He had gone ahead then, while Sylvie and I had elected to stay on in Avignon, and then pick up horses at the half-way house and ride the last few miles to the chateau. Our saddle bags were full of presents, coloured sweets for the children, confetti, crystallised fruit, and little bottles of cognac and liqueurs. Also we had brought a huge family of little santons of painted terracotta for the crèche. No Provençal Christmas is complete without these little figures which populate and deck out the family crèche which itself does the duty of our northern Yule-tide Tree. Originally the cast, so to speak, was a small one, restricted to the Holy Family and two or three other personages who figured directly in the legend, like the kings and so forth; but under the influence of the hardy Provençal sense of poetry the whole thing had flowered rhapsodically and we had found in the shops about forty santons , all different. Their verisimilitude might have been suspect but they brought the story up to date with characters out of stock like the village policeman, a poacher, a Camargue cowboy, and the like. All this gear was carefully wrapped against breakages and stowed in our capacious saddle bags before we attacked the slow winding ascent to the chateau. The horses were fresh and faced the path in lively fashion. But a misty period had set in and the journey needed a little caution also, for neither of us had done this ride for several years and anyway never in winter; we had all but forgotten the devious and winding bridle paths and fire brakes which crossed and recrossed the main road as it rose into the hills. From time to time all visibility was reduced to nil, and then Sylvie, who was in a particularly mischievous mood, pushed her horse into a canter, to be swallowed at once in the mist. It was not a procedure to be recommended and the second time she did it I plunged after her and punished her with an embrace that left her breathless; feeling her cold lips and nose against my face, seeking me out. Such was its magnetism that we became fused into this posture, unwilling to detach ourselves from each other. I tried to at last – for I could feel the mist condensing into droplets on the collar of my old tweed coat; but she whispered “Stay” and it was only too easy to obey her. We were not far off our landfall now, in a forest of tall trees which dripped moisture all around. Among those muttered endearments I recorded one or two phrases which underlined her own astonishment at our situation, as well as a doubt which was the twin of my own, and also Piers’. Ah! Later Sutcliffe was to make cruel fun of us three in his book. “They are so happy. They admire themselves. They have invested a wedding cake in each other. A slice under each pillow, O desirable treat. An unholy trinity of romantics, a love sandwich with the perplexed and thick-thewed Bruce making the filling.” I was glad that he was later so badly punished by my sister Pia – an ignoble emotion, but these passages were wounding. “I have stolen you from Piers, and he has stolen me from you? What can it mean?” I told her there was no loss to be reckoned out. “Not with lost property – the lost-and-found department had caught up with us three.” These sounded like inspired confidences to us: Rob would have thought us mawkish and refused to believe in the reality of our case, our emotions. I was glad that I did not know at the time, it was only years afterwards that the book made its appearance. By that time he was himself going through a