The Stratton Story Read online

  “That’s all right; he’s still behind us,” Mrs. Stratton said. “We must be on the right track.”

  The horn sounded again—reassuringly, Gail thought. She kept on, but she began to wonder why a diversion should send traffic so far off the main road. Ahead, she saw with some relief the roofs and chimneys of a small village; once there, she decided that she would ask for confirmation that she had not mistaken the route.

  “The arrow did point to the left, didn’t it?” she asked Mrs. Stratton.

  “Oh yes.” Mrs. Stratton spoke with complete certainty. “I think I know why we’ve been sent so far round. There was blasting going on—didn’t you notice? This must be a safety measure.”

  It would hardly save their tyres, Gail reflected, and wondered what she would do in the event of a puncture. The thought of Sir Hugo did nothing to reassure her; she could not picture the well-cut grey suit and the light straw hat bent over a greasy wheel.

  She negotiated a narrow bend and drove into the little village. Her first impressions were of heat, loneliness and poverty; her next, that news of an approaching catastrophe had caused the inhabitants to flee, for not a soul was in sight. Then she saw figures appearing one by one at the doors of small, scattered houses and the shabby little cafe and the two or three wretched-looking shops. She was about to get out and ask for directions when Sir Hugo’s car drew up behind her. In its wake came two more—the first, a large station waggon in which were two adults and two teenage children —and behind it, a very small red car containing two extremely stout passengers, a man and a woman.

  Sir Hugo had got out of his car and was coming to speak to Mrs. Stratton. He looked annoyed.

  “I’m afraid you—that is, Miss Sinclair — went off the route,” he said. “I hooted, but you didn’t stop.” His eyes rested in displeasure on Gail. “Didn’t you realise that this couldn’t have been the right way to come? How could heavy traffic possibly negotiate that narrow track?”

  “There was an arrow pointing this way,” Gail said. “I thought it meant we were being diverted past the road works.”

  “Yes, yes, yes; so did I—at first. But I know these roads well; after a few yards, I realised that there must be a mistake. I did my best to stop you, but you paid no attention to my horn. You went on.”

  The driver of the second car had got out and was approaching. He was a large, good-humoured-looking man of about forty, with an easy-going, easy-living air. His accent was American.

  “Off the track, I guess,” he said laconically. “How come that arrow pointed this way?”

  “I cannot tell you—but we must go back at once,” Sir Hugo said. “There’s obviously some mistake, but if we delay, other cars will follow us and there will be a serious bottleneck as they try to turn on the narrow road. We should go at once.”

  “I guess you’re right,” the American agreed, “but this guy”—he jerked his chin towards a man in workmen’s clothes who was approaching—“seems to have something to say about it.”

  The man began to speak before he reached them; waving his hands in wide, angry gestures, he shouted something that Gail, in spite of her fairly sound knowledge of French, could not follow.

  “Far as I can make out,” the American said, “we should have read the notice.”

  “There was no notice,” Sir Hugo said testily, and addressed the man in correct and dignified French. There was no notice, he told him. There was only an arrow which pointed this way.

  “No.” The man spoke emphatically, his lined, weatherbeaten face red, his black eyes snapping. “No, the arrow pointed that way.” He waved a hand towards the hills behind them. They should, he said, have gone that way, unless they wished to come to the village.

  They had not, they told him, wished to come to this village. They would leave it at once.

  Sir Hugo and the American both reached in their pockets for a tip; the man stretched out a calloused hand and pocketed both coins before releasing his last shattering piece of information. They could not go back. To go back now was quite impossible.

  “I don’t understand,” Sir Hugo told him irritably.

  “I do.” The American, sounding more laconic than ever, turned and called to his family. “Hey, Tag, you were right. Tag,” he explained, as the boy and girl scrambled out of the car and came to join them. “Tag here, my son, always has his eyes peeled, on the look-out for trouble. He told me I ought to turn back, but—”

  “But you didn’t listen, did you?” The boy spoke in an excited, triumphant tone. “You didn’t listen, like you always never do. You kept right on—didn’t he, Sharon?”

  Sharon, as round and pretty as her brother was thin and plain, said that yes, Pop had gone right on.

  “That’s right, I didn’t listen,” their father agreed amiably. “And now I’m sorry.”

  As politely as his rising irritation would allow, Sir Hugo asked to be informed what he was sorry about.

  “Why, that I didn’t listen to him. My name’s Cotter, by the way, Tagland Cotter. The lady in the car is my wife Nancy and these are my kids, Sharon and Tag Junior.” He looked indulgently at his son. “Maybe someone can tell me why this boy can always smell trouble a long, long way away.”

  “It’s remarkable.” Sir Hugo spoke stiffly. “Quite remarkable. But I wonder if you would very kindly explain more clearly what this trouble is that he — er — smelled?”

  “The blasting, that’s what,” shrilled Tag. “Didn’t you see? That gang we passed — I told Pop they were all set to blast. They shouted at us. They were trying to get us to stop, I betcher.”

  “Blasting?” Sir Hugo looked stupefied. “But there was no warning. There was no notice of any kind. Where was this notice?” he turned to ask the workman.

  But the workman was hard to find, for the inhabitants of the village had by now grasped the reason for the presence of so many foreign cars in their square; they were crowding round to see, to hear, to comment and advise. As Sir Hugo scanned the circle of faces, seeking his original informant, he heard Mr. Cotter’s voice.

  “Oh-oh. More company. More tourists who can’t read a simple notice when it’s stuck up in front of them.”

  “There was no notice,” Sir Hugo reiterated angrily. “I saw no notice of any kind.”

  “There wasn’t one,” said Mrs. Stratton quietly. “I was sitting beside Gail looking out for signs. There was an arrow, but there was no notice.”

  A third car had driven up —a smart, blue-and-white, two-seater sports car in which were a young man and a very small, extremely pretty girl with a sulky expression. The man introduced himself breezily; he was Mark Stevens, English, and this was Susie, his girl friend, who was beautiful if you could only see behind the scowl, and what the hell was the hold-up?

  “We can’t get outa here,” Tag Junior told him. “We’re stuck. There was a notice to say don’t come, ’cos they were blasting, but we came right on, and now we can’t get back, see?”

  It was not only a matter of seeing. Even as he spoke, there was a prolonged booming sound. Breaking the dead silence that fell upon the square came another, and then a third.

  “Well, that’s it,” said Mark Stevens. “Blasting, just as the boy said. But now that it’s over, what’s keeping us?”

  “The fact” —Sir Hugo averted his eyes from Susie’s generous display of leg and bosom — “simply the fact that the road is now blocked. The notice, as far as I can make out from this man’s account, was posted to warn drivers that the road leading to this village would be blocked from now until they got the blockage cleared — which they seem to think will be early tomorrow morning.”

  ‘‘And in the meantime, we’re stuck?” Gail asked.

  “Quite so.” Sir Hugo’s tone told her that he held her personally responsible for the fact. “There is no passage for cars; only bicycles can get through. And I can only say that—”

  He broke off, his attention for the moment given to a car that had appeared round the bend of the hi
ll.

  “Here comes another chap,” Mark said, “who can’t read a notice — if there was a notice. There won’t be any more arriving after this. That last explosion must have just missed his tail light.”

  Gail was staring at the car—and as she recognised it, and the man driving it, she heard a sound beside her which told her that Mrs. Stratton had recognised the woman seated beside him.

  “Oh . . . no! Oh Gail, no!” she breathed in a tone of horror. “It can’t be . . .”

  Gail said nothing. Julian Meredith’s car crawled towards them, bumping off one ridge to the next, lurching through potholes. And now Mrs. Westerby could be plainly seen. Her expression, when she saw Gail and Mrs. Stratton, was a mixture of astonishment, joy and commiseration. As soon as the car stopped, and before Julian could come round and open her door, she had alighted.

  A sudden hush fell on the assembly. Mrs. Westerby was wearing an old-fashioned dust coat that came almost to her toes. Her straw hat, small and basin-shaped and trimmed with raffia roses, was anchored by a gauze ribbon that ended in a jaunty bow beneath her chins. Beads rattled, the chains round her neck clashed, Mrs. Westerby shouted.

  “Anita! It isn’t possible! Gail! How nice, how very nice-but how tiresome to be held up by this road-mending and sent round by this dreadful by-pass. Now that we’ve met, we must drive on together. Ever since this morning, when I knew you would be setting off from Bordeaux, I hoped we would run into you. Not run into you — no, no, no; a pure figure of speech. It is wonderful to have come upon you like this.”

  Gail found herself swept without warning into a brief but warm embrace. Before Mrs. Stratton could take evasive action, her turn came and she was sucked into the vast, billowing bosom, emerging with a face so pale that Gail thought she was about to swoon—until she looked again and saw that the pallor was that of anger. Sir Hugo moved nearer; he and Mrs. Stratton acknowledged the introduction to Julian.

  Julian’s greeting to Gail was perfunctory; he was looking at the ring of spectators.

  “Anything wrong?” he asked.

  “Not an accident, I trust?” Mrs. Westerby said anxiously.

  It was Mark Stevens who explained the situation to them. His manner showed plainly that he considered the hold-up no hardship; he wasn’t, he told them, going anywhere special; he and Susie were just going. The Americans also seemed unperturbed; Tag Junior and his sister were taking turns at riding the village donkey, while their mother took photographs. The two occupants of the small red car had produced a flask and some sandwiches and were having a stand-up snack.

  Sir Hugo looked round with ill-concealed anger. He did not want food or photographs; he wanted to get back to the main road, failing which he wanted the blood of the workman who had neglected to display the notice where drivers could see it.

  “I shall bring this to the notice of the authorities,” he said.

  “That’s fine.” Mr. Cotter spoke soothingly. “You do that. But right now, I guess we ought to start looking for some place to sleep tonight.”

  “Stranded!” Mrs. Westerby appeared to have at last grasped the full import of the situation. “Marooned!” Julian looked at Gail.

  “You were misled by the arrow, too?” he asked.

  “We were all misled,” Sir Hugo told him angrily. “Why else are we here? The only reason there isn’t a trail of cars following yours is that the block must have occurred shortly after you drove off the main road.”

  “Now I understand!” Mrs. Westerby exclaimed. “I noticed that the car behind ours was stopped by a party of workmen. When I looked again, I saw the car turning back. I would have mentioned it to Julian if I hadn’t been so certain that we were following the direction indicated by the arrow. I’m not going to pretend that I’m too distressed about it, because it’s such a pleasure to have met my sister-in-law. Anita, as we are all fellow-strandees, I think we had better make ourselves known to everybody. I am Mrs. Westerby, from Sussex, England; this is my godson, Julian Meredith. Mrs. Stratton is my sister-in-law. She is travelling with Miss Gail Sinclair.”

  She paused expectantly, and the others made themselves known. To each, Mrs. Westerby offered a word, in the manner of one giving out prizes. She remembered that Sir Hugo had married one of the pretty Degrelle sisters—Laura, wasn’t it? She had known them as children and had always thought Laura the prettiest. Laura was not travelling with Sir Hugo?

  Sir Hugo said that he was travelling alone; the way he said it made Mrs. Westerby lower her voice and lean forward to address him in an anguished tone.

  “Not . . . dead?” she breathed. “Have I been tactless? Have I wounded you?”

  Sir Hugo, looking at her with hatred, said that his wife was not dead. Mrs. Westerby, sighing with relief, turned to Mr. Cotter, patted the unappreciative Tag Junior on the head, told Sharon sympathetically that fifteen was always an awkward age, and informed her mother that she would have taken her for an Englishwoman.

  “My wife,” Mr. Cotter said hastily, seeing his wife’s expression, “isn’t English. She comes from an old Southern family. A very old Southern family.”

  Mrs. Westerby bowed, and turned to study the stout couple chewing beside their car.

  “German?” she ventured. “I thought so. Mr. and Mrs. Guzzman? How do you do. And you” —she turned to Mark and Susie—“are sister and brother?”

  “God forbid,” said Mark. “Look, how would one get a drink in this place?”

  “Before we drink, let’s fix some place to sleep,” Mr. Cotter suggested.

  Mrs. Stratton, standing pale and silent beside Sir Hugo, glanced at him as though waiting for him to take charge of affairs. But it was Mrs. Westerby who assumed command. Turning to the bystanders, she spoke in a patois that was understood by none of her fellow-travellers.

  “I am speaking to these people,” she explained, “in the way the Basques in this part of France speak—the way I learned to speak to them as a child. I have been asking about accommodation for the night. There is an inn - that building over there. This is the landlord”—she indicated a small, shrunken figure — “who says that he can offer five rooms only, three of them facing the hillside and the other two facing this way — rather small, but with a balcony.”

  “Count me out,” Mark said at once. “Susie and I carry a tent.”

  Mr. Guzzman, in halting English, enquired what was to be done about those who would not be able to stay at the inn.

  “I think we ought to draw lots,” Mr. Cotter said. “We can put numbers into a hat, if anybody’s got a spare hat, and we draw a room at the inn, or we don’t. From the look of it, the place won’t be much more comfortable than any of those other houses over there.”

  “I think they’re pretty.” Sharon looked round at the scattered little Basque-type dwellings. “I’d like to stay in that one with the cows.”

  “She means she’ll stay inside and the cows’ll be outside—I think,” her father explained. “Well, now let’s get this lottery started.”

  Mrs. Westerby had already produced another small round hat, and was extracting visiting cards from a small silver case. She began to count the company.

  “The Guzzmans, Anita, Sir Hugo, Mr. Stevens —no, not Mr. Stevens; Gail, Julian, myself, the Cotter family. Mr. Cotter, how many rooms do you require?”

  “We usually take one large and two small, but I guess this time, we’ll take what we can get,” he told her.

  “There is no shortage of accommodation in the village,” said Mrs. Westerby, “but everybody must take their meals at the inn. Mr. Cotter, we shall count your family as one unit, I think.”

  “Just as you say,” he agreed equably.

  “I shall leave five cards blank. Those who draw the five blanks will be entitled to choose a room at the inn. The others, I’m afraid, will have to go elsewhere. Does everybody agree to this?” Mrs. Westerby asked.

  Nobody disagreed. Using the radiator of Julian’s car as a table, she took her pen and wrote briefly on the back of
some of the cards.

  “I am simply putting crosses,” she looked up to explain. “Five blanks, and the rest crosses.”

  She folded the cards in two and in two again, and dropped them into the hat.

  “Will you please,” she requested, walking up to the waiting line, “open your card as soon as you draw it. I shall begin at this end and work along the line until all the blanks are drawn. Anita?”

  Mrs. Stratton took a card and unfolded it; the landlord of the inn drew near, ready to welcome his guests. The local inhabitants formed a semi-circle at a respectful distance, looking like under-privileged lions waiting to be thrown a few scraps of gladiator.

  “A blank,” said Mrs. Stratton, and held up her card.

  “Lucky for you,” said Mrs. Westerby, peering at it. “Sir Hugo?”

  “Please draw your own first,” he said stiffly.

  “Oh, thank you.”

  She drew a card, opened it and gave an exclamation of annoyance.

  “Mine is blank,” she said, and held it up for all to see. “I’m not going to pretend I shan’t be more comfortable at the inn, instead of having to walk up and down the hill to get to dinner and breakfast, but I do feel rather like the woman who won her own raffle. Sir Hugo?”

  He drew a blank card, and Mrs. Westerby spoke irritably.

  “I haven’t shaken them up enough. Please wait.” She shook the hat vigorously. “That’s better. Now we can go on.”

  The Guzzmans and Gail came next; they also drew blanks, and Mrs. Westerby turned to the rest of the party.

  “The inn is now full, but I think you will all get quite good rooms at the other houses,” she said. “Let me tell you where they are. This man”—she detached him from the crowd—“offers a room in his house, which is the one over there. This woman is the owner of the shop at the end of the square; she offers two rooms. In that pink house on the hill there’s a room—this woman will show it to anybody who would like to inspect it.”