The Splendour Falls

I took the coin from Daddy’s hand, without thinking, and tossed it in the water. It changed, too, as it fell, no longer silver but a diamond, and where it sank the river ran pure red, like blood.

Alarmed, I looked up at the place where I’d seen Harry, but he wasn’t there. The only person standing on the far shore was a lean tall man with pale blonde hair, his eyes fixed sadly on my face. He was trying to tell me something – I could see his lips moving, but the wind stole his voice, and all that reached me was a single word: ‘Trust …’

A cold shadow fell across the grass beside me, and I looked up to meet the gentle gaze of the old man François. ‘Seeing ghosts?’ he asked me. Then, incredibly, he raised a violin to his shoulder and began to play Beethoven.

I opened my eyes.

One floor below, Neil stopped his practising a moment, tuned a string, began again. I listened, staring at the ceiling. Ordinarily, I found Beethoven soothing, just the thing to clear my mind of stray and troubling dreams, but this afternoon it proved no help at all.

At length, I simply shut it out. Closing my eyes to the light, I turned my face against the pillow and felt the unexpected trail of tears.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

There moved the multitude, a thousand heads:

‘You’ve got a snail on your sleeve,’ Neil pointed out, quite calmly, as if it were an everyday occurrence. I looked down in surprise.

‘So I have. Poor little thing. Making a break for it, that’s what he’s doing.’ Gently I detached the clinging creature from the slick material of my windcheater. I ought to have put him back in the bucket with the others, I suppose, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I closed my fingers softly round the snail and wandered on, away from the fishmonger’s stall. The noisy Thursday market crowd pressed in on all sides, but Neil managed to stay close by my shoulder.

‘Thief,’ he said, grinning.

‘I’m not stealing him, I’m liberating him,’ was my stubborn reply. ‘Bravery should be rewarded.’

‘Well, I’d hardly think that chap back there with the tattoo and the cleaver would agree with you. He’s charging a good penny for his escargots.’

I shrugged. ‘Plenty more in the bucket. Do you see a planter anywhere about?’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I can’t put him down here, now can I?’ I explained, patiently. ‘He’d be trodden on.’

Neil sent me a lopsided smile and lifted his eyes to look over my head. ‘Would a flower pot do?’ he asked. ‘There’s a flower seller over there, by the fountain.’

The fountain square was not so crowded, and one of the benches was actually free. Neil sat down with a grateful sigh while I set free my pilfered snail among the potted geraniums.

I was rather glad myself to be out of the crush for a moment. For all its festive fun and colour, the market was a confusing sort of place, with everybody jostling and disagreeing over the price of a bolt of calico or a hunk of cheese, and children coming loose from their parents and being chased down with a stern warning not to wander off again, and the vendors themselves doing everything short of a strip-tease to make one stop beneath the bright striped awnings and take notice.

Some of the vendors had gone high tech. With microphones shoved down their shirt-fronts they kept their running patter up and drowned the ragged voices of their neighbours, while from every corner of the Place du Général de Gaulle came blaring music, blending like a weird discordant symphony by some off-beat composer.

I didn’t mind the noise – it was the crowd that was a nuisance. We’d started off in company with Simon and Paul, only to lose them several minutes later. I’d tried myself to lose Neil, once or twice, but it hadn’t worked. He was tall enough to see above the milling heads, and my bright blue jumper made me easy to spot. And, to be honest, I hadn’t really tried that hard.

‘I must be getting old,’ said Neil. ‘I haven’t the stamina for market day that I once had.’

‘I know what you mean.’ I turned, leaning against the bench, and found him watching me. The strong midday sun caught him full in the eyes, making them glow a strange iridescent blue before he narrowed them in reflex.

‘How many pets do you have, back in England?’

I stared at him. ‘Not a one. Why?’

‘I just wondered. Animals do seem to follow you about, don’t they? First the cat, and now a snail.’ Again the brief and tilting smile. ‘I’d have thought your house would be stuffed to the rafters with strays.’

I shook my head. ‘No, there’s only me.’

‘I saw your cat last night, by the way, when I went for my walk. Quite an adventurous chap, isn’t he? He’d gone clear across the bridge to the other side of the river, the Quai Danton.’

I heard the hint of admiration in his tone, and glanced up sideways, struck by a sudden thought. ‘I don’t suppose you ever adopt strays, yourself …?’

Neil intercepted my look with knowing eyes. ‘Much as I’m sure your little friend would enjoy the train ride back to Austria, I’m afraid I couldn’t take him. My landlady doesn’t allow pets.’

I’d been tempted to take the cat home with me to England, only it wouldn’t be fair to put him through the quarantine. I thought of winter coming on, and sighed. ‘He ought to live in Rome,’ I said. ‘They have whole colonies of cats there, running wild, with women to feed them.’