Bloodthirst Read online

  ‘I can’t wait,’ he grinned. He turned the ignition key and the Citroen lurched down the long driveway. Soon they were gliding along a narrow road which curved across the flat Rhone delta. On either side rushes bowed beneath the force of the mistral. Above, the sky had a delicate opal tint foretelling the hot, wash-bag blue which would come once the sun was high enough to start mirages rippling above the salt pans.

  ‘Look,’ cried Anne-Marie, actually clapping her hands with delight. ‘Gardiens !’

  On the road ahead of them was a line of black figures astride large white horses, the counterpoint to the black fighting bulls the gardiens reared. Anne-Marie waved as the car slowed to pass. The youngest rider, proud in his. black leather with silver buckles, blew her a kiss. The others nodded their broad-brimmed hats with dignity.

  ‘How marvellous,’ said Anne-Marie as Peter accelerated.

  ‘They are the real cowboys, those ones. It was the gardiens who went to America ages ago who started the cowboy style there. They are wearing their best, they must be going to the running of the bulls.’

  On the road they passed more colourful caravans pulled by a varying assortment of cars, ranging down from an ancient Mercedes, whose rusted mudguards flapped like wings, to a pink Cadillac.

  ‘Not all the Gypsies are poor people,’ said Anne-Marie as they overtook the Cadillac. ‘Some of the fairground and carnival folk are very wealthy. You’ll be surprised at some of the luxury caravans at the encampment.’

  Peter noticed a row of people crouched in a line across a field.

  ‘What are they doing? They look like Chinese rice planters.’

  ‘That’s just what they are doing, planting rice,’ explained Anne-Marie. ‘I told you the Camargue is wonderful, Peter. Now you have the proof of what I say. You have seen the cowboys, now you see the rice being planted as in Hong Kong. There are lagoons full of pink flamingos as in Africa. Tomorrow we must get horses and ride out to see them.’

  Peter parked the car by the small church with a battlemented tower, a reminder of the days when the Corsairs came raiding for Christian slaves. They found a little cafe in a square and settled themselves under a Martini umbrella. As he took their orders, the sleepy patron told them they were his first customers. Nearby an old man in a clown’s costume peddled large balloons which, filled with helium, continuously tugged at their strings. With his free hand he banged a drum and often a Gypsy child handed over a coin and scampered away with a balloon bobbing above it.

  When he was opposite them the clown fumbled with some change, dropped it and in the following confusion released the score of strings he had been holding. Immediately white, red, blue, green, and yellow globes drifted skywards amidst the laughter of the spectators.

  ‘That should give him a good subject,’ said Peter.

  ‘Mmmmm?’ said Anne-Marie.

  Peter pointed to the corner of the square where a young artist had set up his equipment. Anne-Marie slipped on her sunglasses and looked in the direction of Peter’s pointing finger.

  She gazed intently for a moment then muttered: ‘Yes, “Balloons over Saintes Maries de la Mer” should make a good picture.’

  Peter watched with interest as the young man set about his work, quite unconcerned by watching Gypsies. He was wearing an old straw hat which reminded Peter of Van Gogh.

  After a few minutes the painter straightened up, thrust his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and strolled slowly round the square, looking closely at the buildings and the deep shadows they cast. As he came close to the cafe where Anne-Marie was thoughtfully regarding her cup he paused and looked at her with a slight smile on his finely-chiselled lips.

  Peter was used to men looking at Anne-Marie with admiration. Usually it half flattered and half annoyed him, but this made him uneasy. There was something arrogant about the young man’s bearing as he stood there, rocking slightly on his heels, hands still thrust behind him. It seemed he was about to say something, then thought better of it and began to whistle. He turned slowly and sauntered across the square to his easel where he continued to rough in with a piece of charcoal.

  ‘Look, there’s Holly Archer,’ said Anne-Marie suddenly, and for a second Peter thought he detected a note of relief in her voice.

  Across the cobbles she came, the sunlight turning her hair into a vivid aureole. She was dressed in a white slacks suit with a bottle-green scarf.

  ‘Hi there,’ she said. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  She, too, wore sunglasses, but they did not hide the telltale smudges below her eyes from Peter.

  ‘Sit down please,’ invited Anne-Marie. ‘Garҫon! How are you today, Miss Archer? No bad effects after your little accident?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ said Holly, lighting a Sobranie. ‘But what a night I had! The dreams! I thought I was going round the twist! Well, this should put it right.’ She put a green and black capsule into her mouth and swallowed some coffee.

  ‘Do you take many of those?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Professional interest, doctor?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘This assignment is supposed to get me over the abdabs, so let’s hope this is the last one. What’s in the book for today?’

  ‘The Gypsies are still arriving,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘The final ceremony won’t take place for nearly a week, so you will have plenty of time to relax. They are running the bulls this afternoon. This morning I was going to take Peter along the shore.’ She threw Peter a private glance while Holly watched some men begin to assemble a small roundabout in the centre of the square. He nodded agreement.

  ‘Please come with us, Miss Archer,’ she said. ‘It will help you get over your bad night.’

  ‘Call me Holly, please, and thank you very much.’

  They rose and walked down a narrow street to the seafront. A low concrete sea wall ran to the right, and behind it they could see the tops of the caravans in the Gypsy camp. To the left was an expanse of bone-white beach stretching into the shimmering distance.

  ‘It’s marvellous,’ breathed Holly. ‘I’m better already. I can’t believe it. Look at those boats.’ She pointed to where several high-prowed fishing boats had been drawn up on the fine sand.

  ‘They are decorated the same as when Van Gogh made his picture of them,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘Only now they have outboards instead of sails.’

  ‘No wonder he came here to paint,’ said Peter. ‘This light’s almost too intense.’

  As they began to walk along the littoral Holly said to Anne-Marie: ‘Could you give me the background to this festival? I was in too much of a state to bother with research before I left London.’

  ‘Saint Sara, who they worship here, has never been recognized by Rome, but she is still the patron of Gypsies and vagabonds,’ Anne-Marie explained. ‘The legend is that after the crucifixion the two Holy Marys left Palestine by boat, with their black servant called Sara. Their vessel was wrecked on this beach and the women were cast up, very unhappy and bedraggled. Sara disappeared and returned with stolen clothing for them to wear. From that incident the town got the name of Saintes Maries de la Mer — and the Gypsies their saint.

  ‘For her festival Gypsy families come from all over Europe. They honour her in a way which I think can only be pagan. You will see next week.

  ‘At the moment the statue of Saint Sara, which is about the size of a child and has a black face, is in the crypt of the church. Later we must pay our respects to her. Next week she is brought out for the ceremony of the robes, and then to be carried in procession to the sea. It is very moving to see so much sincerity. When I was little I was brought for the festival from Arles and I got so caught up in the emotion surrounding Sara I howled my eyes out.’

  ‘What’s the ceremony of the robes?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Through the winter the women of each family sew a beautiful silk robe for Sara in remembrance of when she arrived naked on the shore. Next Thursday she will be brought out on to a platform by the church. Last year’
s robes will be taken off. Then representatives of each family will lay a new robe on the statue’s shoulders. By the end of the ceremony she looks like a huge bundle of cloth.’

  While the two girls talked, Peter was content to amble behind and enjoy the harshness of the sun. Ahead were scintillating stretches of dried sea salt, and trembling in the heated air beyond them was a grotesque formation.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Holly, squinting through her sunglasses.

  ‘It looks like the hand of a giant who has sunk in the quicksand,’ Anne-Marie said.

  As they drew nearer Peter exclaimed: ‘It’s a tree which has been washed up, but it could be a piece of modem sculpture,’

  ‘Let’s paint it white and sell it to the Musée d’Art Moderne,’ Anne-Marie joked. Laughing like children, they ran across the rippled sand to the half-buried tree which soon dwarfed them. The action of sea and sand had polished the wood until it was like gnarled bone.

  ‘What a beautiful thing,’ Holly said, running her hand over the bleached grain.

  ‘Signorina, please stand there, just as you are.’

  They turned at the sound of the unexpected voice.

  Running down a sand dune was a man in pale blue slacks and navy sports shirt. Approaching middle age, as testified by the fullness of his belly against his expensive lizard-skin belt, he still moved with speed and grace. His glossy hair was thinning above his high, broad forehead but as compensation it was allowed to curl fully over his collar.

  He was brown. Almost too brown, Holly thought, though the tan emphasized his even teeth attractively. His most pleasant feature, she decided, was his eyes. As black as olives, they had great depth and a quality of gentleness. Only the thin lips hinted ruthlessness. She had seen the face before, but where?

  ‘Excuse me shouting,’ he said, holding up a black 35 mm Pentax. ‘I was going to take a picture when you came along. Signorina, as you stood with your hand on the tree it looked fantastic.’

  ‘This for the local camera club?’ asked Holly with a bright smile.

  ‘Excuse me again. I take photographs for my living. My name is Bruno Farina.’

  My God, thought Holly. Of course!

  Bruno Farina smiled and raised his hands in a typical Italian gesture. He had only said a few words, yet already they liked him.

  ‘I’ll be happy to be your model,’ Holly said.

  ‘It is your hair, signorina. I am taking colour, and it will look magnificent there by white branches with such a blue sky as a background. Excuse me once more,’ and he danced forward and without disrespect took a length of Holly’s hair and eased it down across her face.

  ‘The windblown look,’ he explained.

  Peter and Anne-Marie moved back out of range as he began to work and Holly struck attitudes by the natural abstract. With swift dexterity he changed lenses, lay on his back to get certain angles, and raced up a sand hill to get distant shots. Runnels of sweat shone on his wide face. Finally he kicked off his moccasins and, with camera held high, splashed into the light surf to get a picture with foam-flecked water as a foreground. They joined in his laughter as an unexpected breaker caught him. When he rejoined them he was soaked to the waist.

  ‘For such pictures a little wet is nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Signorina, you have modelled free for me. So, supposing I make some money out of the pictures, let me spend some in advance. Please, all of you have lunch with me back in Saintes Maries.’

  They agreed, and Bruno Farina became their friend.

  As they trekked back along the beach Peter and Anne-Marie stooped to collect some tiny but exquisite shells where the froth of spent waves became the plaything of the mistral. Holly and Bruno Farina walked on ahead, hands in pockets and heads bowed with conversation.

  ‘Do you know who he is?’ asked Anne-Marie as she reached to pick up a pinkish scallop shell. ‘Look, a mermaid’s fan,’ she added and held it up.

  ‘He’s a photographer called Bruno Farina,’ said Peter.

  ‘He’s the Bruno Farina,’ she said. ‘He’s one of the top photo-journalists in the world. They use his work in the colour supplements in England. I often used to see his work in Paris Match. No wonder Holly’s thrilled to meet him. She fancies him.’

  ‘But she’s only just met him, how can you say that?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ Anne-Marie replied with a mischievous sparkle in her violet eyes. ‘If Bruno plays, his cards right, as you say, Holly will be able to throw away her pills.’

  The central square was now thronged; townsfolk, tourists, hippies and Gypsies all mingled in the dusty heat. The merry-go-round was now whirling to strident carnival music. Gypsy children queued impatiently to ride the red-nostrilled horses which swung out so magnificently at the end of their chains.

  Bruno led them to a restaurant where apparently he was already well known. The patron greeted him expansively and gave him a table with a good view of the square. As they thankfully sat down to their aperitifs, he continued working. Fitting a telephoto lens into the Pentax body, he picked it up and aimed at any- pretty Gypsy girl he noticed crossing the square.

  ‘I wish I had been a photographer rather than a writer,’ declared Holly. ‘Click! Your work is done. When I get back I have to write it and put in the angles.’

  Bruno shrugged. ‘Not so easy as that, signorina. Anyone in the world can pick up a camera and take a picture. Yet why is it that if you have two men with exactly the same equipment, one sells a picture for hundreds of dollars and the other never sells a thing?’

  ‘I suppose it’s all in the eye,’ Peter suggested.

  ‘You are right, my friend,’ cried Bruno, tapping his right eyelid. ‘It is the artist’s ability to see in a way that makes others see. Mv father was an artist, from him I get the eye. It is the eve plus the ability to push the button at the exact moment — that is all. But it is hard at first. I started on a Vespa trying to get snatch shots of film stars on the Via Venetia. More competition there than in Vietnam. So I quit, sold my father’s paintings, and went to the East where I was determined to stay until I sold a picture story to Life. Story after story I sent, my savings became nothing, I lived on rice — and how I hate rice.

  ‘Then I did a little thing on the children’s games. Bloody executions, bloody revolutions, bloody wars, bloody earthquakes — nothing! Indian hopscotch, and I was in!’

  A waiter brought their ecrevisse and for a while the talk died. Now the heat drove most of the people from the square; only the ragged children continued to surge round the carousel. An old Gypsy woman, bulging with fat and smoking a short pipe, waddled towards them along the line of umbrella-shaded tables.

  ‘I think she’s a fortune-teller,’ said Anne-Marie.

  ‘She has a good face, that one,’ muttered Bruno, quickly changing lenses again. ‘Signorina, please get her to tell your fortune.’ He leaned back in his metal chair to get enough focusing distance.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ said Holly. ‘I don’t … oh, what the hell! For the great Bruno Farina, why not?’

  ‘You may learn something interesting,’ Bruno said. ‘Here is argent to put in her palm.’

  Anne-Marie spoke to the old woman in rapid French. She nodded, picked up the coins from the check tablecloth and turned to Holly. For a moment she looked at her face intently, then took her hand and scrutinized the palm. Her eyes swivelled from Holly’s hand to her face and back to the hand. Then she deliberately spat on the palm, threw the money on the table and shuffled away as fast as her bulk would allow.

  Bruno swore in musical Italian and jumped up.

  ‘Let her go,’ said Holly. Her face screwed up with repugnance and she began wiping her hand with a paper handkerchief. ‘The dirty old bitch must be mad!’

  ‘Have a drink,’ said Peter, pouring wine from their litre picket.

  ‘What do you say, doctor? She has the madness, eh?’ Peter nodded, but there was a troubled line on his forehead. Holly continued to scrub at her hand with paper hand
kerchiefs but soon cheered up enough to attempt to joke about it.

  ‘If my editor were here he’d turn it into a story,’ she said. ‘“Gypsy’s Warning Crossed my Palm with Saliva.”’

  They laughed their appreciation and Bruno gallantly kissed the hand which had been defiled.

  Chapter 12

  The night was hot and still and a rhythmic sighing like the breathing of a giant came from the sea. On its oily swell lanterns of fishing boats cast intermittent reflections. Laughter gusted from the Gypsy encampment, as did frequent outbursts of flamenco. Behind the ancient silhouette of Saintes Maries de la Mer a golden moon climbed over the world’s rim.

  Peter Pilgrim sat in the still-warm sand, letting a handful hour glass through his fingers. In his free hand he held a glass of whisky and Perrier. Beside him Bruno Farina did likewise. Anne-Marie had gone with Holly to her small hotel, giving them a chance to get mildly drunk together.

  ‘Bullfighting tomorrow,’ Peter said inconsequently.

  ‘Better get there early for a good seat,’ said Bruno, helping himself to the bottle. ‘If there is an injury you rush into the ring with your little black bag and be a hero to your French lady.’

  ‘I’d already find you there with your little black camera,’ laughed Peter. ‘I envy you, Bruno. All you need is your camera and you can roam the world, your own master.’

  ‘A lot of jobs seem good to those who haven’t got them,’ he replied. ‘It’s only when you’re doing it yourself you realize the snags. But compare my erratic way of life to yours. There you are in a modem hospital in a beautiful white gown. “Swab,” you say to a beautiful nurse, or “Forceps”. And with a skilled movement your save the life of a Cabinet Minister. “Dr Pilgrim is always so wonderfully cool” whisper the beautiful nurses. But I suppose your work is like all work, it has its disappointments and frustrations.’

  ‘You’re damn right there,’ agreed Peter. ‘I was taken off important research just when I thought I was getting somewhere. I’m still puzzled by it all, and God knows what I’ll do in England. Back to some routine job, I suppose.’