Caravan to Vaccares Read Online Free PDF Page A

then stepped courteously to one side to permit the passage of a bustling Le Grand Due, if a man of his build could be said to bustle, followed by a plainly reluctant Lila. He carried a notebook and had what looked to be a folklorist’s gleam in his eye. But bent though he was on the pursuit of knowledge he hadn’t forgotten to fortify himself with a large red apple at which he was munching away steadily. Le Grand Duc looked like the sort of man who would always get his priorities right.
    Bowman, a hesitant Cecile beside him, followed rather more leisurely. When they were half way down the steps a jeep was detached from the leading caravan, three men piled aboard and the jeep took off down the hill at speed. As Bowman and the girl approached the knot of people where the gypsy was vainly trying to calm the now sobbing woman, the restaurant manager broke away from them and hurried towards the steps. Bowman barred his way.
    â€˜What’s up?’
    â€˜Woman says her son has disappeared. They’ve sent a search party back along the road.’
    â€˜Oh?’ Bowman removed his glasses. ‘But people don’t disappear just like that.’
    â€˜That’s what I say. That’s why I’m calling the police.’
    He hurried on his way. Cecile, who had followed Bowman without any great show of enthusiam, said: ‘What’s all the fuss! Why is that woman crying?’
    â€˜Her son’s disappeared.’
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜That’s all.’
    â€˜You mean that nothing’s happened to him?’
    â€˜Not that anyone seems to know.’
    â€˜There could be a dozen reasons. Surely she doesn’t have to carry on like that.’
    â€˜Gypsies,’ Bowman said by way of explanation. ‘Very emotional. Very attached to their offspring. Do you have any children!’
    She wasn’t as calmly composed as she looked. Even ih the lamplight it wasn’t difficult to see the red touching her cheeks. She said: ‘That wasn’t fair.’
    Bowman blinked, looked at her and said: ‘No, it wasn’t. Forgive me. I didn’t mean it that way. If you had kids and one was missing, would you react like that?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜I said I was sorry.’
    â€˜I’d be worried, of course.’ She wasn’t a person who could maintain anger or resentment for more than a fleeting moment of time. ‘Maybe I’d be worried stiff. But I wouldn’t be so – so violently grief-stricken, so hysterical, well not unless – ’
    â€˜Unless what?’
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know. I mean, if I’d reason to believe that – that – ’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜You know perfectly well what I mean.’
    â€˜I’ll never know what women mean,’ Bowman said sadly, ‘but this time I can guess.’
    They moved on and literally bumped into Le Grand Duc and Lila. The girls spoke and introductions, Bowman saw, were inevitable and in order. Le Grand Duc shook his hand and said, ‘Charmed, charmed,’ but it was plain to see that he wasn’t in the least bit charmed, it was just that the aristocracy knew how to behave. He hadn’t, Bowman noted, the soft flabby hand one might have expected: the hand was hard and the grip that of a strong man carefully not exerting too much pressure.
    â€˜Fascinating,’ he announced. He addressed himself exclusively to the two girls. ‘Do you know that all those gypsies have come from the far side of the Iron Curtain? Hungarian or Rumanian, most of them. Their leader, fellow called Czerda – met him last year, that’s him with that woman there – has come all the way from the Black Sea.’
    â€˜But how about frontiers?’ Bowman asked. ‘Especially between East and West.’
    â€˜Eh? What? Ah?’ He finally became aware of Bowman’s presence. ‘They travel without let or hindrance, most of all when people