The Orchid Trilogy by Jocelyn Brooke

Author:Jocelyn Brooke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK
Published: 2017-10-04T14:46:37+00:00

lève l’ancre pour une exotique nature.

Drab, dirty, easy-going, friendly – the town huddled familiarly under the cliffs, the barracks and the castle impending grimly upon it from above. I was happier here than anywhere; I didn’t in the least regret my exile from London – from the parties, the pub-crawls, the dingy, fog-bound gaiety. I wondered, occasionally, what had happened to the people I knew; Basil, for one, had passed out of my life completely; he had not written since his marriage, and I didn’t even know where he was living.

Then, one Saturday evening, without warning, and just as I was leaving my lodgings to catch the Dover bus, Basil turned up. He drove up to the door in a large, expensive car; but he still wore the old clothes I remembered from his Army days: the leather-patched coat, the pork-pie hat.

‘Come on, get in – we’re going to Dover,’ he said. ‘Where’s your brother?’

My brother was in London for the week-end. Without further words, Basil opened the car-door, I got in, and we started off.

‘I thought we might eat out of doors,’ he said, as we roared up the Dover hill. ‘I’ve got some food.’

It was a late-summer evening, and fine. We parked the car in a side-road on top of the cliffs, and carried Basil’s provisions to the edge of a chalk-pit, overlooking the town. Basil must have brought the food from London: crab-sandwiches, half a lobster and a terrine of foie gras. There were also two bottles of hock.

We sat on the edge of the chalk-pit and ate and drank. For some reason I felt oddly embarrassed by Basil; there was something altogether unnatural about his manner, he seemed pent-up, and had a peculiar air of urgency, as though some rendezvous of vast importance awaited him. The picnic was a hustled, pass-overish affair: I was scarcely allowed to finish my share of the sandwiches, or to drink my wine. When the bottles were empty, Basil threw them over the chalk-pit with rather a vindictive air, as though he hoped some enemy were lurking below.

‘Come on,’ he said.

‘What’s the hurry?’ I asked. ‘Are we meeting somebody?’

‘Lots of people, probably, old boy.’

We drove on, into Dover, and went to a pub in the market square. It was twilight by now, the lights were coming out, and the streets were taking on that brief, hallucinatory beauty which even the dingiest seaside town can assume on a fine summer evening. The castle on the hill sprang into flood-lit brilliance; the pavements were crowded with soldiers and holidaymakers.

Once inside a pub, Basil’s curious, taut manner began to relax. He kept up a gusty, rather evasive conversation: he was living down in Surrey, he said, with his wife – a nice little place. No, he didn’t get up to London much nowadays. He was off to Germany tomorrow – that was what had brought him down. Was he going alone? I asked, surprised. Yes, his wife didn’t care for travelling; besides, he was going on business.

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