The Voice of the Turtle-dove .sx ANTHONY CARSON .sx Vence is a sober spot , half way between small town and village , pigeon grey , sly with arches , and linked by a whispering plot of fountains .sx In the main tree-heavy square you can sit in the autumn sunshine , still burning like a half-cooled iron , sip pastis and read the local newspapers .sx One called La Patriote is Communist , and at the time of our arrival it was throwing huge over-ripe verbal tomatoes at General de Gaulle .sx One side of this square is a smart but modest bar called Pierre's Bar .sx For one day , with the help of the Syndicat d'Initiative , we had been hunting for furnished rooms , and had given up , when an elderly lady , the owner of a residence called the Poet's Nest , had firmly closed the door in our noses .sx 'It is a pity,' said Mart , 'because it would have been a good address .sx ' Now , after a woman's radar look , she decided Pierre would solve our problems .sx This was true , Pierre was a true Provenc@6al , thin and yellow as lemon peel , wrestling with some gnawing rat of an illness , man of all trades , married to a commanding lady who loved small talk and the discreet accumulation of money .sx We went in .sx There were a few people in the bar , elderly , well-off , artistic , who , you felt , had made a hard bargain for giving up .sx 'I have furnished rooms,' said Pierre , 'and all mod cons .sx ' The price was 16,000 francs a month .sx 'Yes,' we said immediately , even before viewing .sx We were shown around by Pierre .sx The flat was on the third floor ; two rooms ; soft Provenc@6al view ; good intimate furnishing and colour ; running hot water from Butagas installation for washing-up , basin and bidet ; own private , modern lavatory .sx The first night's sleeping was like a long convalescence .sx We were woken up twice about dawn by a soft eruption of turtle-doves .sx This was strange , even magic , because the owner's name was Pierre Tortorolo which , in Nicoison Italian means 'turtledove' .sx Pierre Turtledove .sx When we woke up properly it was raining , an even more hopeless rain than London , and we looked out of the windows at the weeping trees and the curling white breath of the mountains .sx The land looked like a beaten woman and the turtle-doves cried her shame .sx There they were , in fact , below us , eight of them .sx Four of them were flattened on the window sills , two immolated on a nearby roof top , the other pair copulating .sx We had a morning at Pierre's .sx He talked about people .sx Marc Chagall used to live here and an Englishman named Lawrence .sx He was here , near the railway station , three or four years .sx During this period he wrote a book , The Lover of Lady Chatterly .sx No , he hadn't read it ; Madame did all the reading .sx Lawrence died in this very place .sx He used to come to Pierre's Bar again and again .sx No , he couldn't really remember him , he was one of the crowd .sx The sun came out ; Mart went shopping ; I sat in the square reading the Patriote .sx There was a front-page rear-attack on de Gaulle , and the rest of the paper was given up to murders , apart for [SIC] an outcry against a proposal to drop radio-active material into the Mediterranean between Corsica and St Raphael .sx All the murders were well documented and had the air of being written by an ingenious , but mad film director of the Thirties .sx They mostly occurred in lonely farm-houses .sx Monsieur H , for instance , had been clubbed and throttled to death by his wife , children and father-in-law , after muddling up some sheep while the worse for drink .sx The family group then sat down for a late lunch before the father-in-law telephoned the police .sx Then again , Monsieur V , owing to family troubles , had written to the local paper and the superintendent of police , informing them that he was on the point of committing suicide , and gratefully leaving his house appurtenances and utensils to the superintendent .sx Monsieur V's house was immediately surrounded by firemen and other officials , but there was no Monsieur V. He telephoned a few minutes later from a nearby village , apologising for the trouble , but explaining that the walls were porous and the gas had escaped .sx General relief was expressed , but Monsieur V ( this was actually reported in the next issue ) returned home and shot himself , leaving a note which again left his household goods to the superintendent .sx Some grim comic relief was provided by an elderly farm labourer out for a shoot who hid himself in a bush and imitated a blackbird .sx Unfortunately a sporting taxi-driver was after this very bird and shot the farm-labourer in the face .sx All , however , ended well , reported the paper , since the pellets were easily removed and the labourer was able to return to work the same afternoon .sx We travelled down to Nice on the Lambretta .sx You can free-wheel down a quarter of the way .sx In the middle of the journey is a valley with a sea of vines and olives and beaches of earth pricked to blood by the hoe .sx Rising from the flecked sea are islands tapering to shipwrecked castles and towns , grey , rose-headed mariners clinging like limpets to the rock .sx There is a curd of morning smoke and a muffled bell taps the sky .sx Here we stopped , as in fine weather we always stopped .sx Down below is the village of Cagnes , but between are pockets of heat and cold like the hands of friends or strangers , and a flurry of early smells , the dark bosoms of beech and the thin pine fingers kissed by the sun .sx Then here was Nice , and the old holiday sea , blue as a new school exercise book .sx The same old Nice , creamy , vulgar , out of time , bitter-sweet with the ghosts of dead monarchs and brilliant prostitutes , edging past grubby grandeur to the old sleeping port .sx This , and Paris , were my ruined pavilions , and I could catch the taste of dead dreams on my tongue like spray .sx We parked the Lambretta opposite the Negresco , and went to the beach to have a swim .sx Amazing bedlam rocked in our eyes .sx The sea boiled with waves , they galloped to the walls and spumed over the Promenade des Anglais .sx A huge crowd had collected .sx There were firemen and policemen and ambulances , and the eyes of the spectators were hard with disaster .sx They all had that neat look of Mediterranean people to whom nothing could ever happen , the chosen sane , the uncuckolded , unrobbed , sheltered from disease and accident by doctors , God and the municipality .sx Yet , at any time now , the bell would ring for them- the gilded love house , the mad grandmother or the bloody child at the crossroads .sx Mart , too , was sucked into the crowd , not because she felt immune from horror , but because for her the world was always ending , except in bed .sx I joined her .sx Far out at sea we could see a circular rubber object with a body on it .sx The body was the colour of rotten marble .sx 'It's a woman,' said Mart .sx A boat was approaching it , and someone in oilskins leant over the boat and fell in .sx It was accidental , but nobody in the crowd made a sound .sx It was as if the visible world were an infamous church .sx Then two men grappled on to the marble body and slowly dragged it up on to the boat .sx It was growing cold .sx We left the crowd and drove back to Vence .sx The cool evening perfumes stood beckoning at the corners of the roads .sx Mart is unable to smell ( her sense organs were impaired years ago ) , and I had to explain the low , sharp and sweet signals in the air .sx When we got back home we felt exhausted .sx London sickness ( a sense of guilt , mingled with the memory of sandwiches and incestuous Soho pubs ) still numbed our brains and bodies .sx We went straight to bed and slept until the turtle-doves drummed up the sun .sx The next morning , in the square opposite Pierre's , I read about the Nice beach catastrophe in the Patriote .sx Mart had been right , the body had been a woman's .sx It belonged to a Madame N. Enquiries had been made in the neighbourhood , and it transpired that Madame N's husband had made an arrangement with the dead lady's sister to launch her into the strong sea and there be left to perish .sx The sister , able to swim , had returned to the shore , but instead of returning to her brother-in-law ( with whom she had an illicit relationship ) , she went to her fiance@2's house and confessed everything .sx Her fiance@2 reported her to the police , and then jumped off a cliff near Monte Carlo .sx Homage for Isaac Babel .sx DORIS LESSING .sx The day I promised to take Catherine down to visit my young friend Philip at his school in the country , we were to leave at eleven , but she arrived at nine .sx Her blue dress was new , and so were her fashionable shoes .sx Her hair had just been done .sx She looked more than ever like a pink and gold Renoir girl who expects everything from life .sx Catherine lives in a white house overlooking the sweeping brown tides of the river .sx She helped me clean up my flat with a devotion which said that she felt small flats were altogether more romantic than large houses .sx We drank tea , and talked mainly about Philip , who , being 15 , has pure stern tastes in everything from food to music .sx Catherine looked at the books lying around his room , and asked if she might borrow the stories of Isaac Babel to read on the train .sx Catherine is 13 .sx I suggested she might find them difficult , but she said , 'Philip reads them , doesn't he ?sx ' During the journey I read newspapers and watched her pretty frowning face as she turned the pages of Babel , for she was determined to let nothing get between her and her ambition to be worthy of Philip .sx At the school , which is charming , civilised and expensive , the two children walked together across green fields , and I followed , seeing how the sun gilded their bright friendly heads turned towards each other as they talked .sx In Catherine's left hand she carried the stories of Isaac Babel .sx After lunch we went to the pictures .sx Philip allowed it to be seen that he thought going to the pictures just for the fun of it was not worthy of intelligent people , but he made the concession , for our sakes .sx For his sake we chose the more serious of the two films that were showing in the little town .sx It was about a good priest who helped criminals in New York .sx His goodness , however , was not enough to prevent one of them from being sent to the gas chamber ; and Philip and I waited with Catherine in the dark until she had stopped crying and could face the light of a golden evening .sx At the entrance of the cinema the doorman was lying in wait for anyone who had red eyes .sx Grasping Catherine by her suffering arm , he said bitterly :sx 'Yes , why are you crying , he had to be punished for his crime , didn't he ?sx ' Catherine stared at him , incredulous .sx Philip rescued her by saying with disdain :sx 'Some people don't know right from wrong even when its [SIC] demonstrated to them .sx ' The doorman turned his attention to the next red-eyed emerger from the dark ; and we went on together to the station , the children silent because of the cruelty of the world .sx Finally Catherine said , her eyes wet again :sx 'I think its [SIC] all absolutely beastly , and I can't bear to think about it .sx ' And Philip said :sx 'But we've got to think about it , don't you see , because if we don't it'll just go on and on , don't you see ?sx ' In the train going back to London I sat beside Catherine .sx She had the stories open in front of her , but she said :sx 'Philip's awfully lucky .sx I wish I went to that school .sx Did you notice that girl who said hullo to him in the garden ?sx