Wolfnight by Nicolas Freeling

Author:Nicolas Freeling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2023-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Turn the page to continue reading from the Henri Castang Mysteries

The Back of the North Wind

A man went on holiday to England. He had set foot there only once before; forty years ago; the times had not been normal. An exotic time, and he had behaved in eccentric fashion. In fact emotional: he did not count himself an emotional man. A European war was then still a notion to stir the blood, at nineteen years old. Things would be very different now. Things and times were very different now: today’s nineteen-year-old could scarcely grasp the concept of a war between peoples of the peninsula that is Europe. We amuse ourselves now with war-games about wine or mutton … Landing in England again produced sensations that he could laugh at or shrug away: he did neither. He was alone, and no attitudes were needed.

He wore a dark blue jacket, at once raincoat and parka: it would in Brittany be recognisable as officers’ issue of the Marine Nationale: a corps he had nothing to do with. Perhaps in a sense it was a disguise: he was generally seen in tweed jackets, neat, a bit countrified, and bow ties. The detail has no importance, there being little to mark out this quiet greyish man, neither tall nor short, with regular features scarcely to be called handsome, carefully shaved and, despite many years of desk-work, straight-shouldered, and no slop around the waist. A Frenchman sixty years old, of the northerly or Frankish type with the long head, the narrowish chinny face, hair that has been fair, and pale grey eyes.

His luggage was on his back. It was early enough in the summer for there to be fewer tourists. He hoped to eat and sleep in country pubs. The food would be indigestible?—he would pay no heed. It would rain a great deal?—his jacket was of excellent quality. He spoke little English?—he would understand what was said to him and had little to reply. He was a solitary man. Much devoted to his wife, and if she accompanied him upon journeyings he was content, but if she chose to stay at home then not malcontent. The weeks of his holiday would be well spent in listening and in looking. In this land of the Hyperboreans—strange and secret island—he might catch scraps of voices within himself, glimpses of a man he knew little. There were discoveries to be made. He knew the countries of peninsular Europe well, was attached to them, but of these close and yet far-away neighbours he knew little. Concerning one another both French and English had strange misleading notions, preconceived, arrogant, and quite ridiculous. Among ourselves, is it not much the same? This person we have lived with for a varying quantity of years, we imagine we know and understand well; but leave aside habit, sloth, the wish for comfort, and we find that vanity and fear, the twin powerful motors of our thought and action, blind us to reality. This

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