Maud and Roland’s secret journey to Brittany

Maud and Roland’s secret journey to Brittany marks the point at which their investigation of Christabel LaMotte becomes both a deliberate breach of scholarly propriety and an escape from the lives that had contained them. They leave London to pursue the trail of LaMotte’s disappearance, but their plan also draws them into a shared conspiracy, exposing the personal costs of the quest even as it offers a temporary freedom from them.

Causes and Background

The decision takes shape during a hurried telephone call. Roland is in a call-box, calling Maud with what he describes as disasters; Maud has already had to move the conversation away from Leonora Stern by taking the phone to the bedroom. She tells him that Mortimer Cropper has come, while a solicitor has telephoned James Blackadder. At the same time, Sir George Bailey has made a scene with Maud in Lincoln over electric wheelchairs because he needs money. The professional contest around the papers and the pressures of Maud’s family life arrive together, making the investigation feel increasingly exposed and unstable.

Their unease is not simply about being discovered. Roland knows that the people watching them—Cropper, Blackadder, and Leonora—will judge their actions harshly. He also admits that he has run away rather than respond to Blackadder’s summons. Maud explains that Leonora has found a new lead: Christabel went to her family in Brittany, where a cousin who wrote poems had left papers now held by a French scholar. LaMotte stayed there for some time, a period that might account for the gap surrounding her apparent suicide. This discovery gives their flight a concrete research purpose: Brittany may help them reconstruct the place where LaMotte went when no one knew her whereabouts.

The investigation has already become a self-conscious quest. Maud and Roland recognize that they continued after learning what they could because they needed more time, and because they understood the work as their quest. Yet they also understand that this private justification will not persuade their colleagues. The conflict is between a sincere search for knowledge and the appearance, and possible reality, of an improper scholarly possession of the material they pursue.

Planning the Escape

The plan grows out of memories of their Yorkshire journey. Roland recalls what they said about empty beds at the Foss, the white light on stone, and the sun at Boggle Hole. Maud remembers that they knew where they were in those moments. Against the pressure of London and the scrutiny of other scholars, the remembered places offer a model of being briefly outside ordinary obligations. They imagine disappearing as Christabel had disappeared, and Maud asks whether that means going to Brittany.

The arrangement is practical as well as emotional. Roland says he has no money; Maud answers that she has money, a car, and good French. She proposes to remove Leonora from the flat by getting her invited away, so that if Val telephones there will be no answer. Roland worries that he is not a natural conspirator, and Maud insists that neither is she. Their hesitation does not undo the plan: it makes clear that secrecy is an adopted tactic, not a settled habit.

Roland cannot simply leave without preparation. Maud tells him to go home, have an argument, retrieve his passport and papers secretly, and move into a small hotel in Bloomsbury. When he objects that it is too near the British Museum, she changes the rendezvous to Victoria and says she will deal with Leonora before coming to meet him. The shift from an imagined disappearance to passports, documents, and a hotel gives their escape its material shape; their freedom depends on carefully arranging what they will leave behind and what they must carry.

The Crossing to Brittany

The departure becomes real aboard the Prince of Brittany. Maud and Roland are shut together in a cabin at night, with the engines’ steady throb and the rush of the sea around them. They have watched Portsmouth’s lights glare and dwindle from the deck. Earlier, in London, they had rushed into each other’s arms, but aboard ship they sit side by side on the lower bunk without touching, drinking duty-free whisky and water from toothmugs. Their physical closeness and restraint coexist: the crossing places them together, but does not simplify what they are to each other.

Roland calls their action madness. Maud agrees, adding that she has lied shamelessly to Leonora and stolen Ariane Le Minier’s address when Ariane was not looking. She compares herself with Cropper and Blackadder, and observes that scholars and obsessions can both become dangerous. Her admission makes the journey morally complicated: she is not merely evading the academic rivalry but has begun to use the same kinds of secretive methods that trouble her in others. Her pleasure in breathing sea air and not having to share her flat with Leonora comes alongside that unease, as relief and guilt occupy the same confession.

Costs and Immediate Consequences

For Roland, the crossing follows a series of anticipated losses. He expects to lose his small job in the Ash Factory, Val, and, through Val, the home whose rent she pays. The possibility of leaving is therefore not an uncomplicated romantic gesture: it threatens his work, domestic security, and existing relationship. Yet, aboard ship, he does not feel the full weight of those losses. He describes himself as clear in the head and single, as if separation from the routines of London has temporarily made him feel unencumbered. He suspects that the sea is part of that sensation, and that hiding in London would only have made him feel foolish.

Maud’s concealment of the trip from Leonora and Roland’s effort to leave without alerting Blackadder or Val turn the journey into an active break with their former arrangements. The immediate destination is linked to LaMotte’s trail, but the crossing also creates a temporary space in which Maud and Roland can acknowledge their shared recklessness without yet resolving its consequences. They have not secured a lasting new life; they have reached the sea, and for now that passage is enough to make departure feel like possibility.