the voice of the turtle-dove . Anthony Carson . 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 . 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 . 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 . one side of this square is a smart but modest bar called Pierre &apos;s bar . for one day , with the help of the Syndicat d&apos;Initiative , we had been hunting for furnished rooms , and had given up , when an elderly lady , the owner of a residence called the poet &apos;s nest , had firmly closed the door in our noses . it is a pity , said Mart , because it would have been a good address . now , after a woman &apos;s radar look , she decided Pierre would solve our problems . this was true , Pierre was a true Proven&amp;ccedil;al , 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 . we went in . there were a few people in the bar , elderly , well-off , artistic , who , you felt , had made a hard bargain for giving up . I have furnished rooms , said Pierre , and all mod cons . the price was 16,000 francs a month . yes , we said immediately , even before viewing . we were shown around by Pierre . the flat was on the third floor ; two rooms ; soft Proven&amp;ccedil;al view ; good intimate furnishing and colour ; running hot water from Butagas installation for washing-up , basin and bidet ; own private , modern lavatory . the first night &apos;s sleeping was like a long convalescence . we were woken up twice about dawn by a soft eruption of turtle-doves . this was strange , even magic , because the owner &apos;s name was Pierre Tortorolo which , in Nicoison Italian means turtledove . Pierre Turtledove . 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 . the land looked like a beaten woman and the turtle-doves cried her shame . there they were , in fact , below us , eight of them . four of them were flattened on the window sills , two immolated on a nearby roof top , the other pair copulating . we had a morning at Pierre &apos;s . he talked about people . Marc Chagall used to live here and an Englishman named Lawrence . he was here , near the railway station , three or four years . during this period he wrote a book , the lover of Lady Chatterly . no , he had n&apos;t read it ; Madame did all the reading . Lawrence died in this very place . he used to come to Pierre &apos;s bar again and again . no , he could n&apos;t really remember him , he was one of the crowd . the sun came out ; Mart went shopping ; I sat in the square reading the patriote . there was a front-page rear-attack on de Gaulle , and the rest of the paper was given up to murders , apart for an outcry against a proposal to drop radio-active material into the Mediterranean between Corsica and St Raphael . all the murders were well documented and had the air of being written by an ingenious , but mad film director of the thirties . they mostly occurred in lonely farm-houses . 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 . the family group then sat down for a late lunch before the father-in-law telephoned the police . 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 . Monsieur V &apos;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 . 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 . 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 . unfortunately a sporting taxi-driver was after this very bird and shot the farm-labourer in the face . 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 . we travelled down to Nice on the Lambretta . you can free-wheel down a quarter of the way . 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 . rising from the flecked sea are islands tapering to shipwrecked castles and towns , grey , rose-headed mariners clinging like limpets to the rock . there is a curd of morning smoke and a muffled bell taps the sky . here we stopped , as in fine weather we always stopped . 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 . then here was Nice , and the old holiday sea , blue as a new school exercise book . 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 . this , and Paris , were my ruined pavilions , and I could catch the taste of dead dreams on my tongue like spray . we parked the Lambretta opposite the Negresco , and went to the beach to have a swim . amazing bedlam rocked in our eyes . the sea boiled with waves , they galloped to the walls and spumed over the Promenade des Anglais . a huge crowd had collected . there were firemen and policemen and ambulances , and the eyes of the spectators were hard with disaster . 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 . 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 . 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 . I joined her . far out at sea we could see a circular rubber object with a body on it . the body was the colour of rotten marble . it &apos;s a woman , said Mart . a boat was approaching it , and someone in oilskins leant over the boat and fell in . it was accidental , but nobody in the crowd made a sound . it was as if the visible world were an infamous church . then two men grappled on to the marble body and slowly dragged it up on to the boat . it was growing cold . we left the crowd and drove back to Vence . the cool evening perfumes stood beckoning at the corners of the roads . 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 . when we got back home we felt exhausted . London sickness ( a sense of guilt , mingled with the memory of sandwiches and incestuous Soho pubs ) still numbed our brains and bodies . we went straight to bed and slept until the turtle-doves drummed up the sun . the next morning , in the square opposite Pierre &apos;s , I read about the Nice beach catastrophe in the patriote . Mart had been right , the body had been a woman &apos;s . it belonged to a Madame N . enquiries had been made in the neighbourhood , and it transpired that Madame N &apos;s husband had made an arrangement with the dead lady &apos;s sister to launch her into the strong sea and there be left to perish . 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 fianc&amp;eacute; &apos;s house and confessed everything . her fianc&amp;eacute; reported her to the police , and then jumped off a cliff near Monte Carlo . homage for Isaac Babel . Doris Lessing . 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 . her blue dress was new , and so were her fashionable shoes . her hair had just been done . she looked more than ever like a pink and gold Renoir girl who expects everything from life . Catherine lives in a white house overlooking the sweeping brown tides of the river . she helped me clean up my flat with a devotion which said that she felt small flats were altogether more romantic than large houses . we drank tea , and talked mainly about Philip , who , being 15 , has pure stern tastes in everything from food to music . 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 . Catherine is 13 . I suggested she might find them difficult , but she said , Philip reads them , does n&apos;t he ? 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 . 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 . in Catherine &apos;s left hand she carried the stories of Isaac Babel . after lunch we went to the pictures . 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 . for his sake we chose the more serious of the two films that were showing in the little town . it was about a good priest who helped criminals in New York . 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 . at the entrance of the cinema the doorman was lying in wait for anyone who had red eyes . grasping Catherine by her suffering arm , he said bitterly : yes , why are you crying , he had to be punished for his crime , did n&apos;t he ? Catherine stared at him , incredulous . Philip rescued her by saying with disdain : some people do n&apos;t know right from wrong even when it s demonstrated to them . 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 . finally Catherine said , her eyes wet again : I think it s all absolutely beastly , and I can n&apos;t bear to think about it . and Philip said : but we &apos;ve got to think about it , do n&apos;t you see , because if we do n&apos;t it &apos;ll just go on and on , do n&apos;t you see ? in the train going back to London I sat beside Catherine . she had the stories open in front of her , but she said : Philip &apos;s awfully lucky . I wish I went to that school . did you notice that girl who said hullo to him in the garden ? 