The Saint Around the World (14 page)

But that took no longer than a few flights of stairs, and then they were down on the beach themselves, with the astonishing display of epidermis all around them. Apparently this cove was a little too far for the ambition of the majority of merely curious sightseers, who probably felt that they had worked hard enough for a sensation by the time they had struggled up to the village center, or else the route was not too well publicized, for the Saint fascinatedly counted exactly one scattered handful, two men and three women, who were even technically over-dressed for a game of Adam and Eve.

“Well, now we can make ourselves comfortable,” said Mr. Oddington.

And, untying the string, he stepped gratefully out of his irksome habiliment.

“Aren’t you coming for a swim, George?” he demanded. You look dopey. It’ll wake you up.”

“It still isn’t quite a full hour since we finished lunch,” said McGeorge, clutching even at that swiftly vanishing straw.

“Nonsense,” scoffed Mr. Oddington. “An old superstition. Look at seals. They swim while they’re eating.

McGeorge somehow managed to refrain from mentioning that he was not a seal.

“I—I’m not so used to the sun as the rest of you,” he pleaded. “I don’t think I should have too much all at once. Besides”—he grabbed at another inspiration—“we’ve still got lots of things to talk about.”

“We’ll have the whole evening for that, my boy.”

“The last ferry leaves at five, doesn’t it?”

“But you weren’t thinking of going back today, were you?”

“Obviously. You know we didn’t bring any luggage.”

“I thought you might have a toothbrush in your pocket. You’d know I could lend you a razor. You knew that we didn’t wear clothes there. What on earth would you put in your lug-gage?” asked Mr. Oddington, in devastating perplexity.

The Saint had been gazing around, inventorying details of the general scene with unabashed interest and studiously keep-ing aloof from the argument. At that moment his eyes came to rest on the statuesque figure of a man standing on a ledge of rock about thirty feet up the trail down which they had re-cently scrambled, staring steadily down at them. Simon recog-nized him at once as the self-satisfied Adonis whom Nadine had been talking to in the village. It seemed unnecessarily imaginative to assume that the man had followed them there, but the Saint automatically re-scanned the walk through his mind like a film and confirmed that he had not had any occa-sion to look back. However, it would probably have been equally easy for anyone who knew Mr. Oddington’s habits to foresee where he would go in the afternoon.

“I feel like talking now, Uncle Waldo,” McGeorge said stub-bornly.

He put on the shirt which he had brought with him and sat down firmly, with his knees drawn up, huddling the shirt around him like a small tent.

Mr. Oddington glanced wistfully at the new spear-gun which he had brought along with him. His jaw tightened; and then, surprisingly, he also sat down.

“All right, George, if that’s how you feel. We’ll talk a bit.”

Simon could not tell who else had seen the man on the rocks above.

Nadine Zeult touched his arm.

“Will you come for a swim with me?” she suggested tactfully.

A little triangle of cloth fluttered down on to the beach as she ran into the water.

The Saint ran in after her. Much as he would have given to find an excuse to stay and listen, there was nothing else he could do about it. He stumbled into a plunging dive and swam violently for about twenty yards without lifting his head, until the effort had neutralized the first cool contrast of the water. Then he turned over and pushed his hair back, treading water, and found the girl not far away.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” she said.

“Very good.” He smiled.

He had an idea she was referring to something more than just the ordinary goodness of a temperate sea, but his reply was safe and would have been the same anyway. Somehow it was always a new surprise, because the opportunities were so rare, to re-discover the fantastic difference between swimming in the raw and swimming in anything else at all. Perhaps it was not only the unfamiliarity of total physical liberation, but a throwback of memory to old swimming holes and boyhood truancies and golden days of innocence that could never come again.

She swam idly along for a while, drifting towards one side of the bay, and the Saint paddled lazily beside her because it was the most natural thing to do. Presently they were close to a smooth step of rock, and the girl climbed out on to it and sat there, shaking the water out of her yellow hair, like a sea-nymph. After a moment, the Saint pulled himself up beside her.

“Tell me now what you think,” she said.

“I’m enjoying myself,” he told her.

“You should stay a long time.”

“That’s another matter. This is quite an experience, sort of out of this world—and there aren’t a lot of things I haven’t done. But I was never curious to go to the ordinary kind of nudist colony. There was something that didn’t appeal to me about the secretiveness, about having to join up, and the feeling that you’d be somehow committed to a Cause. I’ve had my own crusades, but I hate being organized. This is different, I admit. This is a lot of people being allowed to do what they want to do, and taking advantage of it, and yet really doing it on their own. But–-“

“You think there is something queer about us?”

“To be honest, I half expected to see a rather freakish-looking bunch of people. I was wrong about that. As a matter of fact, I’d say that on the whole they’re a hell of a lot betterlooking than the average of what you’d find on any ordinary beach. I’m glad there’s a place like this for them, since this is what they want. But as a way of life, it doesn’t mean the same to me that it does to Uncle Waldo.”

“Then if we are not queer, we are foolish.”

“Not that, either.” He crossed his arms over his knees and rested his chin on them, frowning into the glare. “Maybe the rest of the world would be a lot better if it learned your kind of tolerance—about minding your own business and letting everyone do what they like as long as they aren’t hurting any-one else. But I couldn’t settle for just that simple Utopia. Per-haps that’s my loss.”

“At least you don’t despise Mr. Oddington for liking it.”

“Not a bit. I think he’s very lucky to only want what he can have, and to be able to have it.”

“His nephew despises him.”

“I’d just say, he disapproves.”

“He disapproves of me, too.”

“I don’t think he can figure you out. If it comes to that, I’ve been trying to figure you myself. You speak English very well–-“

“I taught in a school in England for three years.”

“Then you also have a better than ordinary education. And you have much better than ordinary looks, and an attractive personality. There must be plenty of other things you could do—things that most girls would like better.”

“But I like it here,” she said simply. “And Mr. Oddington likes it. And what he likes, I like even more. Is that so unusual where you come from?”

He nodded.

“Sometimes.”

“Why don’t you say that you think there must be something wrong because he is so much older?”

“Even if I did, it wouldn’t be any of my business. But you can understand why it might worry George.”

She looked at him without a trace of the coquettish mischief that played so easily on her face.

“Mr. Oddington is a very good man. He is different from other people in his way, but he does nobody any harm. I have known young men who were not good at all.”

Simon held her eyes steadily for a few seconds. If anyone had ever predicted that he would one day hold a conversation like that with a sea-nymph sitting on a rock without a stitch on her, he wouldn’t have believed it. This was what you could get for striking up conversations with strangers in bars, he thought.

He looked back towards the beach, where he Could see Mr. Oddington and his nephew still sitting together. McGeorge was still firmly enveloped in his shirt, while Mr. Oddington poked restively at the stones with his spear-gun. It was too far to see any expression on their faces, but the abruptness of an occasional gesture suggested restrained violence in the discussion.

“I wish you luck,” said the Saint. “But I don’t think George will give you any blessing.”

“Then,” she said, with a toss of her head, “it’s what you call too bad about him.”

She stood up, straight and lovely, and then sprang from her toes and arrowed into the water.

The Saint watched her come up and start swimming towards the shore. The breeze which springs up in the Mediterranean almost every summer afternoon was chasing turbulent riffles even into the sheltered bay; and in the dancing water an increasing number of swimmers, nearly all of them equipped with the diving masks and snorkel breathing tubes without which even a nudist might have felt undressed for Mediterranean swimming in those days, cruised in all directions like a fleet of miniature submarines. Simon stayed on the rock and wondered whether he should follow her, not knowing exactly how he was meant to take her parting retort.

Then, as her blonde head drew near the beach, she found a footing and came upright with her shoulders clear of the water, and at the same time one of the swimmers near her also stopped and stood. The swimmer pushed his mask up on to his forehead to talk; but even without that distant sight of his face, by the development of his shoulders and the carriage of his head, Simon recognized the same persistent male whose arrival at the cove he had already noticed.

Even the Saint had a limit to how long he could curb his discretion, and at that point he reached it. No matter if that meeting was entirely accidental or to what extent it might have been engineered, Nadine and the man were talking again, and the Saint had to hear something of it. One word, or even a look passed between them, might be enough to decide whether he would agree or disagree with McGeorge’s estimate of the situation. This time he couldn’t help it if he seemed crudely intrusive. Nothing in the whole set-up was any of his business anyway, but curiosity had always been one of his major vices.

He dived in and swam towards them, as quickly as he could without too noticeable a churning of water, and keeping his head down as much as possible. But in that way, because of the rustle of water around his ears, he heard nothing until he stopped swimming a yard from them. And then he only heard Nadine say the one word: “Demain.”

Then Nadine saw him.

“I wish I’d brought one of those masks,” he said conversa-tionally. “The water here must be wonderful for them.”

“Yes, it is,” she said.

She was angry—it was easy to see that, although she had it under control. But whether it was because of the interruption, or because of what had been interrupted, he had no way to tell. He let his feet down to the bottom and stood smiling as if he were unaware of any tension at all, and looked at the other man in such a way that it would have been almost im-possible for her to avoid making the introduction.

“This is Monsieur Pierre Eschards,” she said. “Mr. Templar.”

Eschards extended a hand, flexing his biceps.

“Enchante,” he said, but he did not look enchanted. The stare that he gave the Saint was cold and insolent. Then, as if Simon had already passed out of his life again, he turned back to the girl and took her hand. The way he looked at her was quite different in its intensity. “J’attendrai,” he said.

He touched her fingers to his lips, pulled down his mask, and swam away.

Nadine followed him a little distance with her eyes, biting her lip.

Simon took a chance.

“That’s the fellow you first came to the island with, isn’t it?” he said casually.

“I suppose Mr. Oddington told you.” The frown stayed on her brows. “It makes him very cross that Pierre has come back. He does not even think I should speak to him.”

“You can’t altogether blame him for that.”

“Pierre is my cousin. We have known each other since we were children. I cannot suddenly pretend not to know him.”

“But didn’t you say you were—sort of engaged?”

“For a while. I cannot undo the past. But that is all over It was over when I began to go with Mr. Oddington. He should believe that.”

Simon shrugged.

“He might find it easier to believe if Pierre stayed away.”

“I did not ask him to come. He just came here, from An-tibes, where he likes to spend the summer. He said that he wanted to see how it was with me. He should have stayed there. It is a much better place for him.”

“And full of consolations, if you can afford them.”

She gave him a slow measuring look.

“There are plenty of rich women who can afford them,” she said.

It fell into place with a click. The Saint knew now why something about Pierre Eschards had seemed vaguely familiar. He was a type. You could find three or four of his duplicates any day of the season at a place like Eden Roc—sleek and handsome young men, wearing their hair rather esthetically long but with carefully cultivated and tanned physiques, lounging around like well-fed cats, with bold and calculating eyes.

“But I thought you couldn’t afford to stay here unless you had a job. What attracted him to you?”

“Everyone thought my grandfather was rich, and would leave me money. But that summer he died, and he had lost it all in the stock market. After that, Pierre was not so much in love. I did not believe it at first, but I know now that he was only waiting for an excuse for us to break up.”

“But you said he came back to see how it was with you.”

“I did not say he was not fond of me at all. He said I should not be wasting my life here—that presently Mr. Odding-ton would die, and I would not be” so young, but I would have nothing. I told him that Mr. Oddington had thought of that in his will, even before we are going to be married … You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

The Saint needed no one to tell him that he had been grilling her almost like a prosecuting attorney, and only a feat of personality had let him get away with it that far. But he couldn’t stop now.

“I can’t help being interested in people’s problems,” he said disarmingly. “I’m afraid Pierre was rather upset when I butted in. You’d just been telling him something, hadn’t you? I only heard you say, ‘Tomorrow’.”