Caravan to Vaccares. Alistair MacLean

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СКАЧАТЬ centuries, now, the gypsies have come from all over Europe, at the end of May, to worship and venerate the relics of Sara, their patron saint. Monsieur le Duc is writing a book about it.’

      ‘This place,’ Bowman said, ‘is hotching with the most unlikely authors you ever saw.’

      ‘I do not understand, sir.’

      I understand all right.’ The green eyes, Bowman observed, could also be very cool. ‘There’s no need – what on earth is that?’

      The at first faint then gradually swelling sound of many engines in low gear sounded like a tank regiment on the move. They glanced down towards the forecourt as the first of many gypsy caravans came grinding up the steeply winding slope towards the hotel. Once in the forecourt the leading caravans began arranging themselves in neat rows round the perimeter while others passed through the archway in the hedge towards the parking lot beyond. The racket, and the stench of diesel and petrol fumes, while not exactly indescribable or unsupportable, were in marked contrast to the peaceful luxury of the hotel and disconcerting to a degree, this borne out by the fact that Le Grand Duc had momentarily stopped eating. Bowman looked at the restaurant manager, who was gazing up at the stars and obviously communing with himself.

      ‘Monsieur le Duc’s raw material?’Bowman asked.

      ‘Indeed, sir.’

      ‘And now? Entertainment? Gypsy violin music? Street roulette? Shooting galleries? Candy stalls? Palm reading?’

      ‘I’m afraid so, sir.’

      ‘My God!’

      Cecile said distinctly: ‘Snob!’

      ‘I fear, madam,’ the restaurant manager said distantly, ‘that my sympathies lie with Mr Bowman. But it is an ancient custom and we have no wish to offend either the gypsies or the local people.’ He looked down at the forecourt again and frowned. ‘Excuse me, please.’

      He hurried down the steps and made his way across the forecourt to where a group of gypsies appeared to be arguing heatedly. The main protagonists appeared to be a powerfully built hawk-faced gypsy in his middle forties and a clearly distraught and very voluble gypsy woman of the same age who seemed to be very close to tears.

      ‘Coming?’ Bowman asked Cecile.

      ‘What! Down there?’

      ‘Snob!’

      ‘But you said –’

      ‘Idle layabout I may be but I’m a profound student of human nature.’

      ‘You mean you’re nosey?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Bowman took her reluctant arm and made to move off, then stepped courteously to one side to permit the passage of a bustling Le Grand Due, if a man of his build could be said to bustle, followed by a plainly reluctant Lila. He carried a notebook and had what looked to be a folklorist’s gleam in his eye. But bent though he was on the pursuit of knowledge he hadn’t forgotten to fortify himself with a large red apple at which he was munching away steadily. Le Grand Duc looked like the sort of man who would always get his priorities right.

      Bowman, a hesitant Cecile beside him, followed rather more leisurely. When they were half way down the steps a jeep was detached from the leading caravan, three men piled aboard and the jeep took off down the hill at speed. As Bowman and the girl approached the knot of people where the gypsy was vainly trying to calm the now sobbing woman, the restaurant manager broke away from them and hurried towards the steps. Bowman barred his way.

      ‘What’s up?’

      ‘Woman says her son has disappeared. They’ve sent a search party back along the road.’

      ‘Oh?’ Bowman removed his glasses. ‘But people don’t disappear just like that.’

      ‘That’s what I say. That’s why I’m calling the police.’

      He hurried on his way. Cecile, who had followed Bowman without any great show of enthusiam, said: ‘What’s all the fuss! Why is that woman crying?’

      ‘Her son’s disappeared.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘That’s all.’

      ‘You mean that nothing’s happened to him?’

      ‘Not that anyone seems to know.’

      ‘There could be a dozen reasons. Surely she doesn’t have to carry on like that.’

      ‘Gypsies,’ Bowman said by way of explanation. ‘Very emotional. Very attached to their offspring. Do you have any children!’

      She wasn’t as calmly composed as she looked. Even ih the lamplight it wasn’t difficult to see the red touching her cheeks. She said: ‘That wasn’t fair.’

      Bowman blinked, looked at her and said: ‘No, it wasn’t. Forgive me. I didn’t mean it that way. If you had kids and one was missing, would you react like that?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘I said I was sorry.’

      ‘I’d be worried, of course.’ She wasn’t a person who could maintain anger or resentment for more than a fleeting moment of time. ‘Maybe I’d be worried stiff. But I wouldn’t be so – so violently grief-stricken, so hysterical, well not unless –’

      ‘Unless what?’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean, if I’d reason to believe that – that –’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’

      ‘I’ll never know what women mean,’ Bowman said sadly, ‘but this time I can guess.’

      They moved on and literally bumped into Le Grand Duc and Lila. The girls spoke and introductions, Bowman saw, were inevitable and in order. Le Grand Duc shook his hand and said, ‘Charmed, charmed,’ but it was plain to see that he wasn’t in the least bit charmed, it was just that the aristocracy knew how to behave. He hadn’t, Bowman noted, the soft flabby hand one might have expected: the hand was hard and the grip that of a strong man carefully not exerting too much pressure.

      ‘Fascinating,’ he announced. He addressed himself exclusively to the two girls. ‘Do you know that all those gypsies have come from the far side of the Iron Curtain? Hungarian or Rumanian, most of them. Their leader, fellow called Czerda – met him last year, that’s him with that woman there – has come all the way from the Black Sea.’

      ‘But how about frontiers?’ Bowman asked. ‘Especially between East and West.’

      ‘Eh? What? Ah?’ He finally became aware of Bowman’s presence. ‘They travel without let or hindrance, most of all when people know that they are on their annual pilgrimage. Everyone fears them, thinks that they have the evil eye, that they put spells and curses on those who offend them: the Communists believe it as much as anyone, more, for all I know. Nonsense, of course, sheer balderdash. СКАЧАТЬ