My Uncle Oswald(51)

“No,” she said, “it isn’t. And anyway, I’m rather enjoying this.”

“I know you are.”

“What I’m enjoying,” she said, “is the thought of being ravished by all the greatest men in the world. And all the kings. It tickles my fancy.”

“Let’s go out and buy a French motor car,” I said. So out we went and this time I bought a splendid little 10 hp Citroën torpedo, a four-seater, a brand-new model only just out. It cost me the equivalent of three hundred fifty pounds in French money, and it was exactly what I wanted. Although it had no luggage compartment, there was plenty of room on the back seats for all my equipment and suitcases. It was an open tourer, and it had a canvas roof that could be put up in less than a minute if it started to rain. The body was dark blue, the colour of royal blood, and its top speed was an exhilarating 55 mph.

The next morning we set off for Essoyes with my travelling laboratory packed away in the back of the Citroën. We stopped at Troyes for lunch where we ate trout from the Seine (I had two, they were so good) and drank a bottle of white vin du pays. We got to Essoyes at four in the afternoon and booked into a small hotel whose name I have forgotten. My bedroom again became my laboratory, and as soon as everything had been laid out in readiness for the immediate testing and mixing and freezing of semen, Yasmin and I went out to find Monsieur Renoir. This was not difficult. The woman at the desk gave us precise instructions. A large white house, she said, on the right-hand side, three hundred metres beyond the church or some such thing.

I spoke fluent French after my year in Paris. Yasmin spoke just enough of it to get along. She had had a French governess sometime or other during her childhood and that had been a help.

We found the house without any trouble. It was a medium-sized white wooden building standing on its own in a pleasant garden. It was not, I knew, the great man’s main residence. That was down south in Cagnes-sur-Mer, but he probably found it cooler up here in the summer months.

“Good luck,” I said to Yasmin. “I’ll be waiting about a hundred yards down the road.”

She got out of the car and went toward the gates. I watched her going. She wore flat-heeled shoes and a creamy-coloured linen dress, no hat. Cool and demure, she passed through the gates and moved on up the drive swinging her arms as she went. There was a lilt in her walk, a little shadow attending her, and she looked more like a young postulant going in to see the mother superior than someone who was about to cause a saucy explosion within the mind and body of one of the great painters of the world.

It was a warm sunshiny evening. Sitting there in the open motor car I dozed off and did not wake up until two hours later when I found Yasmin getting into the seat beside me.

“What happened?” I said. “Tell me quick! Was everything all right? Did you see him? Have you got the stuff?”

She had a small brown-paper parcel in one hand, her purse in the other. She opened the purse and took out the signed notepaper and the all-important rubbery thing. She handed them to me without speaking. She had a funny look on her face, a mixture of ecstasy and awe, and when I spoke to her she didn’t appear to hear me. Miles away she seemed, miles and miles away.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Why the great silence?” She gazed straight ahead through the windscreen, not hearing me. Her eyes were very bright, her face serene, beatific almost, with a queer radiance.

“Christ, Yasmin,” I said. “What the hell’s the matter with you? You look like you’ve seen a vision.”

“Just get going,” she said, “and leave me alone.”

We drove back to the hotel without talking and went to our separate rooms. I made an immediate microscopic examination of the semen. The sperm were alive but the count was low, very low. I was able to make no more than ten straws. But they were ten sound straws with a count of about twenty million sperm in each. By God, I thought, these are going to cost somebody a lot of money in years to come. They’ll be as rare as the First Folio of Shakespeare. I ordered champagne and a plate of foie-gras and toast, and I sent a message to Yasmin’s room telling her I hoped she would come in and join me.

She arrived half an hour later and she had with her the little brown-paper parcel. I poured her a glass of champagne and put a slice of foie-gras on toast for her. She accepted the champagne, ignored the foie-gras, and remained silent.

“Come on,” I said, “what’s bothering you?”

She emptied her glass in one long swallow and held it out for more. I refilled the glass. She drank half of it, then put it down. “For God’s sake, Yasmin!” I cried. “What happened?”