The Tenth Man (10 page)

THE TENTH MAN

PART

III

13

‘WHO?’

‘Chavel.’ The voice gained confidence and command. ‘Would you mind opening the door, my good fellow, and letting me in?’

‘Who is it?’ the girl said: she had paused half way down the stairs. A wild hope beat in Charlot’s breast, and he called to her in fearful hilarity and relief, ‘Chavel. He says he’s Chavel.’ Now, he thought, at last I am really Charlot. Somebody else can bear all the hate …

‘Let him in,’ she said, and he unchained the door.

The man who came in was as familiar as the voice, but Charlot couldn’t place him. He was tall and well made with an odd effect of vulgarity that came from a certain flashiness, something almost jaunty in his walk … His skin was very white and looked powdered, and when he spoke his voice was like that of a singer: he seemed too aware of its intonations. You felt he could play any tune on it he pleased.

‘My dear lady,’ he said, ‘you must excuse my breaking in like this.’ His gaze passed to Charlot and he suddenly paused: it was as though he too recognized … or thought he recognized …

‘What do you want?’ Thérèse said.

He dragged his eyes reluctantly from Charlot and
said
, ‘Shelter—and a bit of food.’

Thérèse said, ‘And you are really Chavel?’

He said uncertainly, ‘Yes, yes, I am Chavel.’

She came down the stairs and across the hall to him. She said, ‘I thought you’d come … one day.’ He put his hand out as though his mind couldn’t grasp the possibility of anything beyond the conventional. ‘Dear lady,’ he said, and she spat full in his face. This was what she had looked forward to all these months, and now it was over, like a child at the end of a party, she began to cry.

‘Why don’t you go?’ Charlot said.

The man who called himself Chavel was wiping his face with his sleeve. He said, ‘I can’t. They are looking for me.’

‘Why?’

He said, ‘Anybody who has an enemy anywhere is a collaborationist.’

‘But you were in a German prison.’

‘They say I was put there as an informer,’ the man said quietly. The promptitude of the retort seemed to give him back his self-respect and confidence. He said to the girl slowly, ‘Of course. You are Mademoiselle Mangeot. It was wrong of me to come here, I know, but any hunted animal makes for the earth it knows. You must forgive my want of tact, mademoiselle. I’ll go at once.’

She sat on the bottom step of the stairs with her face covered by her hands.

‘Yes, you’d better go quickly,’ Charlot said. The man swivelled his white powdery face round on Charlot: his lips were dry and he moistened them with a tiny bit of tongue: the only genuine thing about him was his fear. But the fear was under control: like a vicious horse beneath a good rider it showed only in the mouth and the eyeball. He said, ‘My only excuse is that I had a message for mademoiselle from her brother.’ Charlot’s unremitting, curious gaze seemed to disconcert him. He said, ‘I seem to know you.’

The girl looked quickly up. ‘You ought to know him. He was in the same prison.’

Again Charlot had to admire the man’s control.

‘Ah, I think it comes back,’ the man said, ‘there were a great many of us.’

‘Is he really Chavel?’ the girl asked.

The fear was still there, but it was hidden firmly and Charlot was amazed at the man’s effrontery. The white face turned like a naked globe towards him prepared to outglance him, and it was Charlot who looked away. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s Chavel. But he’s changed.’ An expression of glee crinkled the man’s face and then all was smooth again.

‘Well,’ the girl asked, ‘what’s your message?’

‘It was just that he loved you and this was the best thing he could do for you.’

It was bitterly cold in the big hall, and the man suddenly shivered. He said, ‘Goodnight, mademoiselle. Forgive my intrusion. I should have
known
that the earth is closed.’ He bowed with stagy grace, but the gesture was lost on her. She had turned her back on him and was already passing out of sight round a turn of the stairs.

‘The door, Monsieur Chavel,’ Charlot mocked him.

But the man had one shot left. ‘You are an impostor,’ he said, ‘you were not in the prison, you did not recognize me. Do you think I would have forgotten any face there? I think I ought to expose you to your mistress. You are obviously preying on her good nature.’

Charlot let him ramble on, plunging deeper. Then he said, ‘I was in the prison and I did recognize you, Monsieur Carosse.’

‘Good God,’ he said, taking the longest look he had yet. ‘Not Pidot? It can’t be Pidot with that voice.’

‘No, you mistook me for Pidot once before. My name is Charlot. This is the second time you’ve done me a service, Monsieur Carosse.’

‘You give me a poor return then, don’t you, pushing me out into the night like this? The wind’s east, and I’m damned if it hasn’t begun to rain.’ The more afraid he was, the more jaunty he became: jauntiness was like a medicine he took for the nerves. He turned up the collar of his overcoat. ‘To be given the bird in the provinces,’ he said, ‘a poor end to a distinguished career. Good night, my ungrateful Charlot. How did I ever mistake you for poor Pidot?’

‘You’ll freeze.’

‘Only too probable. So did Edgar Allan Poe.’

‘Listen,’ Charlot said, ‘I’m not as ungrateful as that. You can stay one night. Take off your shoes while I slam the door.’ He closed the door loudly. ‘Follow me.’ But he had only taken two steps when the girl called from the landing, ‘Charlot, has he gone?’

‘Yes, he’s gone.’ He waited a moment and then called up, ‘I’ll make sure the back door is closed,’ and then he led the man in his stockinged feet down the passage leading to the kitchen quarters, up the back stairs, to his own room.

‘You can sleep here,’ he said, ‘and I’ll let you out early tomorrow. Nobody must see you go, or I shall have to go with you.’ The man sat comfortably on the bed and stretched his legs. ‘Are you
the
Carosse?’ Charlot asked curiously.

‘I know no other Carosse but myself,’ the man said. ‘I have no brothers, no sisters, and no parents. I wouldn’t know if somewhere in the wastes of the provinces live a few obscure Carosses: there may be a second cousin in Limoges. Of course,’ he winced slightly, ‘there is still my first wife, the old bitch.’

‘And now they are after you?’

‘There is an absurd puritanical conception abroad in this country,’ Monsieur Carosse said, ‘that man can live by bread alone. A most un-Catholic idea. I suppose I could have lived on bread—black bread—during the occupation, but the spirit requires its luxuries.’ He smiled confidently. ‘One could only obtain
luxuries
from one source.’

‘But what induced you to come here?’

‘The police, my dear fellow, and these ardent young men with guns who call themselves the Resistance. I was aiming south, but unfortunately my features are too well-known, except,’ he said with a touch of bitterness, ‘in this house.’

‘But how did you know … what made you think …?’

‘Even in classical comedy, my friend, one becomes accustomed to gag.’ He smoothed his trousers. ‘This was a gag, but not, you will say, my most successful. And yet, you know, had I been given time I would have played her in,’ he said with relish.

‘I still don’t know how you came here.’

‘Just an impromptu. I was in an inn about sixty miles from here, a place beginning, I think, with B. I can’t remember its name. A funny old boy who had been released from prison was drinking there with his cronies. He was quite a person in the place, the mayor, I gathered—you know the sort, with a paunch and a fob and a big watch the size of a cheese and enormous pomposity. He was telling them the whole story of this man who bought his life, the tenth man he called him: quite a good title, that. He had some grudge against him, I couldn’t understand what. Well, it seemed to me unlikely that this Chavel would ever have had the nerve to go home—so I decided to go home for him. I could play the part much better than he could—a dull
lawyer
type, but of course
you
know the man.’

‘Yes, you hadn’t counted on that.’

‘Who would? The coincidence is really too great. You
were
in the prison, I suppose? You aren’t playing the provinces too?’

‘No, I was there.’

‘Then why did you pretend to recognize me?’

Charlot said, ‘She’s always had the idea that Chavel would turn up one day. It’s been an obsession. I thought you might cure that obsession. Perhaps you have. I’ll have to go now. Unless you want to be turned out into the rain, don’t move from here.’

He found Thérèse back in the dining-room. She was staring at the portrait of his grandfather. ‘There’s no likeness,’ she said, ‘no likeness at all.’

‘Don’t you think perhaps in the eyes …’

‘No, I can’t see any. You’re more like that painting than he is.’

He said, ‘Shall I lay the table now?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘we can’t have it in here now that he’s around.’

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. You see, the transfer’s genuine. He’ll never trouble you any more.’ He said, ‘You can forget all about him now.’

‘That’s just what I can’t do. Oh,’ she broke out passionately, ‘you can see what a coward I am. I said the other day that everyone’s tested once and afterwards you know what you are. Well, I know now all right. I ought to shake him by the hand and say
“Welcome
, brother: we’re both of the same blood.” ’

‘I don’t understand,’ Charlot said. ‘You turned him out. What more could you have done?’

‘I could have shot him. I always told myself I’d shoot him.’

‘You can’t walk away and fetch a gun and come back and shoot a man in cold blood.’

‘Why not? He had my brother shot in cold blood. There must have been plenty of cold blood, mustn’t there, all through the night? You told me they shot him in the morning.’

Again he was stung into defence. ‘There was one thing I didn’t tell you. Once during the night Chavel tried to call the deal off. And your brother would have none of it.’

‘Once,’ she said, ‘once. Fancy that. He tried once. I bet he tried hard.’

They had supper as usual in the kitchen. Madame Mangeot asked peevishly what the noise had been in the hall. ‘It was like a public meeting,’ she said.

‘Only a beggar,’ Charlot said, ‘who wanted to stay the night.’

‘Why did you let him into the house? Such riffraff we get here when my back’s turned. I don’t know what Michel would say.’

‘He didn’t get beyond the hall, Mother,’ Thérèse said.

‘But I heard two of them go along the passage towards the kitchen. It wasn’t you. You were upstairs.’

Charlot said quickly, ‘I couldn’t turn him out without so much as a piece of bread. That wouldn’t have been human. I let him out the back way.’ Thérèse sombrely looked away from him, watching the wet world outside. They could hear the rain coming up in gusts against the house, beating against the windows and dripping from the eaves. It wasn’t a night for any human being to be abroad in, and he thought, how she must hate Chavel. He thought of Chavel detachedly as another man: he had been enabled to lose his identity, he thought, for ever.

It was a silent meal. When it was over Madame Mangeot lumbered straight off to bed. She never helped in the house now, nor would she wait to see her daughter working. What she didn’t see she didn’t know. The Mangeots were landowners: they didn’t work: they hired others …

‘He didn’t look a coward,’ Thérèse said.

‘You can forget him now.’

‘That rain’s following him,’ Thérèse said. ‘All the way from this house it’s followed him. That particular rain. It’s like a link.’

‘You needn’t think about him any more.’

‘And Michel’s dead. He’s really dead now.’ She passed her palm across the window to wipe away the steam. ‘Now he’s come and he’s gone again, and Michel’s dead. Nobody else knew him.’

‘I knew him.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said vaguely: it seemed to be a
knowledge
that didn’t count.

‘Thérèse,’ he said. It was the first time he had called her by that name.

‘Yes?’ she asked.

He was a conventional man: nothing affected that. His life provided models for behaviour in any likely circumstance: they stood around him like tailor’s dummies. There had been no model for a man condemned to death, but he had not grown to middle age without making more than one proposal of marriage. The circumstances, however, had been easier. He had been able to state in fairly exact figures the annual amount of his income and the condition of his property. He had been able before that to establish an atmosphere of the right intimacy, and he had been fairly certain that he and the young woman thought alike on such things as politics, religion and family life. Now he saw himself reflected in a canister carrying a dishcloth; he was without money, property or possessions, and he knew nothing of the woman—except this blind desire of heart and body, this extra-ordinary tenderness, a longing he had never experienced before to protect …

‘What is it?’ she said. She was still turned to the window as though she couldn’t dissociate herself from the long, wet tramp of the pseudo-Chavel.

He said stiffly, ‘I’ve been here more than two weeks. You don’t know anything about me.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said.

‘Have you thought what you’ll do when she dies?’

‘I don’t know. There’s time enough to think.’ She took her eyes reluctantly away from the streaming pane. ‘Maybe I’ll marry,’ she said and smiled at him.

A feeling of sickness and despair took him. There was no reason after all for him to assume that she had not left a man behind her in Paris, some stupid boy probably of her own class who shared her
gamin
knowledge of the streets round Menilmontant.

‘Who?’

‘How do I know?’ she said lightly. ‘There aren’t many round here, are there? Roche, the one-armed hero: I don’t much fancy marrying a piece of a man. There’s you, of course …’

He found his mouth was dry: it was absurd to experience this excitement before asking a tradeswoman’s daughter … but he had missed the opportunity before he could get his tongue to move. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to go to Brinac market for one. I always heard that when you were rich, there were lots of fortune hunters around. I can’t see any about here.’