peeled off a pair of thousand-franc notes and put them on the side
table.
I'll pay the bill downstairs. He picked up his bag. Stay loose, he
said.
Paris was spoiled for him now, so he took the road south again towards
the sun for the sky was filled with swollen black cloud and it rained
before he passed the turn-off to Fontainebleau. It rained as he
believed was only possible in the tropics, a solid deluge that flooded
the concrete of the highway and blurred his windscreen so that the
flogging of the wipers could not clear it swiftly enough for safe
vision.
David was alone and discomforted by his inability to sustain
communication with another human being.
Although the other traffic had moderated its pace in the rain, he drove
fast, feeling the drift and skate of his tyres on the slick surface.
This time the calming effect of speed was ineffective and when he ran
out of the rain south of Beaune it seemed that the wolf pack of
loneliness ran close behind him.
However, the first outpouring of sunshine lightened his mood, and then
far over the stone walls and rigid green lines of the vineyards he saw a
wind-sock floating like a soft white sausage from its pole. He found
the exit from the highway half a mile farther on, and the sign Club
Aeronautique de Provence. He followed it to a neat little airfield set
among the vineyards, and one of the aircraft on the hard-stand was a
Marchetti Acrobatic type F26o. David climbed out of the Mustang and
stared at it like a drunkard contemplating his first whisky of the day.
The Frenchman in the club office looked like an unsuccessful undertaker,
and even when David showed him his logbook and sheafs of licences, he
resisted the temptation of hiring him the Marchetti. David could take
his pick from the others, but the Marchetti was not for hire. David
added a 500-franc note to the pile of documents, and it disappeared
miraculously into the Frenchman's pocket. Still he would not let David
take the Marchetti solo, and he insisted on joining him in the
instructor's seat.
David executed a slow and stately four-point roll before they had
crossed the boundary fence. It was an act of defiance, and he made the
stops crisp and exaggerated. The Frenchman cried Sacr6 blue! with
great feeling and froze in his seat, but he had the good sense not to
interfere with the controls. David completed the manoeuvre and then
immediately rolled in the opposite direction with the wing-tip a mere
fifty feet above the tips of the vines. The Frenchman relaxed visibly,
recognizing the masterly touch, and when David landed an hour later he
grinned mournfully at him.
Formidable! he said, and shared his lunch with David, garlic polony,
bread and a bottle of rank red wine. The good feeling of flight and the
aroma of garlic lasted David all the way to Madrid.
Just as though it had been arranged long before, as though his frantic
flight across half of Europe was a pre-knowledge that something of
importance awaited him in Madrid.
He reached the city in the evening, hurrying the last day's journey to
