‘Bringing me and Krylov with him,’ I said bitterly.
‘You weren’t to know the Russians and British were hand in hand on this one,’ said Pa consolingly.
And I still didn’t really understand why. But what was quite clear was that I could abandon any hope of the Brigadier and Reilly busting in mobhanded to do a US cavalry rescue act.
But looking on the positive side, at least I now had the chance to achieve the goal which had drawn me from the lotus-life on Isla de Margarita after all those years.
I went across to Angie. Vasco regarded me with suspicion. I said in Italian, ‘Please, I would like to talk with my daughter.’ He still didn’t move, but Pa joined me and took him by the arm and led him to the other side of the room.
Angie was leaning back against the wall, her long legs crossed in a half-lotus position. She didn’t look at me.
I squatted beside her, bones and muscles protesting.
I said, ‘Angie, I’m bitterly sorry for what I did to your mother.’
She looked at me now in alarm and pain and said, ‘You said it wasn’t you!’
So she wanted to believe me. That was good.
‘It wasn’t,’ I hastened to assure her. ‘I didn’t harm her, I swear. But it was because of me she was there.’
‘Yes,’ she said fiercely. ‘Why did you have to come back?’
She had to be told, though I felt a great reluctance to do so. Partly because I did not want to pain her—but also partly because I feared to see that it did not pain her enough. My usual reasonings—the bullshit and the asshole—only this time they both happened to be true.
I compromised a little and said, ‘I’ve been ill, very ill. I got to worrying I might die without seeing you again. So I came back to talk with you, which I’m now doing.’
‘So I’d have a happy memory to cherish when I was old and grey?’ she said.
She had a sharp tongue and a lot of spirit. I liked that. If I wasn’t doing anything else, at least I was provoking her out of depression.
I said, ‘I’m not so optimistic nor so sentimental. But I didn’t think I could leave you with a worse memory than running off and abandoning you when you were only six.’
‘Didn’t you? You’ve come pretty close,’ she said.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ I sighed deeply, feeling myself close to floundering. ‘Listen. Memories are … memories. Good or bad, they have no substance, mustn’t be allowed to have substance …’
She looked at me blankly.
I pressed on, like a man lost in deep snow.
‘Once you let them become substantial, they accrete more and more … substance … and in the end they can become … cancerous.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘I’ve got a couple of memories,’ I said. ‘One of them is about a swimming competition. I used to be pretty hot stuff in the water, did anyone ever tell you that?’
‘I think Uncle Percy mentioned it,’ she said slowly. ‘He often told me … nice things about you.’
Good old Percy. It must have been like trying to oppose tanks with a sling-shot.
‘This memory is of the summer of 1963. I swam for England—well, for an England team,’ I went on. ‘I was a last-minute substitute. No one imagined I could be anything but a respectable last, least of all me. But Mama—your grandmother—came to watch, and I wanted so desperately to do well that somehow I excelled myself. I won. Everyone was delighted, of course, but it was Mama’s delight that mattered. She was so happy. So proud. So beautiful.’
I fell silent.
‘That sounds like a good memory,’ said Angie softly.
‘And then there’s another,’ I said, almost to myself now. ‘The same year. Mama with blood streaming from her head. So still, so pale. The last time I ever saw her.’
Angie said nothing now, but I could guess who she was thinking of.
‘Listen, darling,’ I said urgently. ‘The point is, they’re both just memories. But I let them root themselves in my mind and grow and gain substance, so that one became the last good thing that ever happened to me and the other a bad thing that would keep on happening for ever.’
She made a raft of her fingers between her legs and stared down at it.
‘The last good thing,’ she echoed. Again I felt I could read her thought.
‘There were other good things,’ I tried to explain. ‘I was married and that was good for a while. And you were born. That was always good. But those two dominant memories made these other good things seem like some kind of betrayal. The memories were always making demands on me, urging me on …’
I tailed off feeling that this was hopeless. These incoherent babblings could only be convincing her that she had been fathered by the dangerous lunatic the Brigadier had warned against. I had to be absolutely explicit with no subtle shades of meaning to hide myself in.
I said very distinctly, ‘I wanted to hurt my father. It was the most important thing in my life. I couldn’t get at him direct, so without thinking almost, instinctively, intuitively, I set out to hurt the things he loved. I destroyed what he had laboured to create. And myself also; I destroyed myself.’
I looked across the room. Pa’s eyes were fixed on me. I couldn’t read the emotion in his face. I said slowly, ‘I suppose I feared or suspected or recognized that he loved me. And that was what I set out to destroy, above all. His love for me as I thought he had destroyed mine for him.’
Angie said quietly, ‘And Mummy and I were just … unimportant.’
‘No!’ I said fiercely. ‘Kate and I were far apart, I admit that. We both drifted, both of us. But you were never unimportant.’
‘Less important then,’ she said. ‘You felt you could sacrifice us for a greater good.’
She spoke in a cool, objective voice like some aged philosophy don pursuing a point in a seminar. I looked at my father once more in despair. To my surprise, I had no difficulty now interpreting his expression. It was angry exasperation, the look he always wore when he felt I was missing what lay right under my nose.
I looked back to Angie. Her face was a blank, but not her eyes. And suddenly it dawned on me that this measured, impersonal manner wasn’t just a way of distancing events, nor even of simply grasping them. No, in a mad way she was trying to please me. I was consci entiously talking to her as though she were a self-possessed adult, and she was trying to live up to my apparent expectations! Yet everything that had happened to her that day must be making her long to be encouraged to react as a terrified and comfortless child.
Awkwardly I put my arms around her. For a moment she was stiff and unyielding. Then, as though through some violent chemical change her substances had deliquesced in a second, she slumped against me and sobbed against my chest as if every sorrow of her neglected childhood were fighting for passage through her slender throat.
This time I made no attempt to change tears into laughter.
We were still clinging together a few minutes later when Krylov came into the room.
‘I hadn’t realized what emotional depths the British conceal,’ he remarked. ‘I’m. sorry, Mr Swift, but I must ask you and your father to come with me.’
I glanced round at him. He was smiling with that melancholy, sympathetic smile of his, but there was nothing sympathetic about the way he was holding the pistol. Angie’s sobs died away, but she clung to me even more tightly and I had to exert my strength to break her grip.
‘Listen,’ I said urgently. ‘Eventually there will be money for you. Whether you take it or not must be your decision. But understand, it came from my arms deals. It came from all kinds of governments and all kinds of political persuasions. What you feel about that is up to you. But whatever was said at the time or has been said since, not a penny of it came from donations to the Bessacarr Trust. Every penny of every charitable donation was spent in the way proposed. Believe that.’
‘What do you mean?’ she cried. ‘Why are you talking about money? I’ll see y
ou again, won’t I? What’s going to happen to you?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing. Believe me. I just wanted you to know, that’s all. Of course I’ll see you soon, back in Rome probably. Right, Major?’
‘Of course, Mr Swift,’ he said courteously. We just have one or two small business matters to sort out. So if you will step this way, gentlemen.’
I rose, pulling Angie with me, and led her across to Vasco.
‘Take care of her, nephew,’ I said.
For the first time ever he looked at me with something other than aggressive distrust and nodded. I kissed Angie and she clung to me once more. That disturbing eroticism of my first impressions had disappeared entirely. Psychologically we were in our proper relationship at last.
‘Goodbye, love,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
Pa kissed her next, a grandfatherly peck. He did this kind of thing so much better than me. It was impossible to believe he regarded this as anything more than a brief, inconsequential separation.
‘Ciao,’ he said.
He went out. I followed him, I glanced back and gave what I hoped was a reassuring smile to Angie, but the look of tragic loss on her face did not change and I would have gone back inside. But Krylov pulled the door to and locked it and handed the key to Vasari who was standing in the corridor with the shotgun at the port.
‘Please to walk, Mr Swift,’ the Major said. ‘But do not stop smiling, either of you. We are all good friends together, for a little while longer at least. Now move1.’
20
… a bit of rope …
What he meant by being good friends was made clear to us in a few graphic sentences as we walked towards the stairs. The peasants (as Krylov contemptuously referred to them) needed reassurance that all was well. Pa was to give them that reassurance. With his customary incisiveness, Pa got the matter absolutely clear.
‘You mean there are too many of them to dispose of?’
‘Not necessarily. But it would be inconvenient.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then your granddaughter and grandson will suffer.’
‘And if they won’t believe me?’
‘They’ll believe you,’ Krylov said, laughing. ‘It’s a good set-up they have here. The last thing they want is policemen and officials all over the place. They’ll believe you because they want to believe you.’
‘And what happens after that?’
‘To whom?’
‘My grandchildren.’
‘They go free,’ said Krylov. ‘They keep quiet because you reassure them all is well, and also because they know we have the two of you.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Pa. ‘The two of us. And what will you do with the two of us?’
Krylov’s face expressed a kind of pedantic puzzlement.
‘But surely it is understood? Nothing. We merely have to keep you a little while and do nothing, isn’t that the situation?’
Pa wasn’t the only one with an instinct for clarity.
The meeting took place in the villa’s main room, a long cool salon lying behind the terrace on which I had so ill-advisedly attempted to kill my father. The refugees were represented by five men including my old friends from the cellar, Giorgio and Piero. Krylov had tucked his pistol out of sight and entered the room with his hands resting familiarly on our shoulders like a friendly host escorting a couple of honoured guests in to supper.
I felt a great impulse to take his arm and break it slowly in several places. Though if I broke it quickly in only one place, perhaps I could get to the goon (a new face this) outside the door before he could use his machine-pistol or raise the alarm. And having done that, perhaps I could make it upstairs and blow away Vasari. Of course, I’d no idea how many more reinforcements were hanging around the villa, but none the less it was a matter for serious consideration.
In the event it took less than a second for me to decide.
For as I stepped into the salon, I realized that the peasants were not alone.
With his back to me, seated on a hard chair before the standing group, was a grey-haired figure. He was speaking in a rapid but highly anglicized Italian. I recognized the clipped tones and the clipped hair at the same moment.
It was the Brigadier.
And there, looking soulfully out of an open window across the Tyrrhenian Sea like a fairy-tale princess waiting to be rescued, except that not many fairy-tale princesses wear Gucci jeans and a string vest, was Reilly.
The odds had lengthened. Krylov’s arm was safe for a little longer.
The Brigadier looked round, stood up and came towards us, hand outstretched, official smile creasing his Empire tan.
‘Lord Bessacarr! Mr Swift! How nice to see you both. How are you?’
He shook our hands energetically, talking all the while in a mixture of English and Italian, the former being used to tell us that in the eyes of the peasants he was a representative of the British Consul in Naples, the latter to assure the peasants that Her Gracious Majesty, the Queen of England, would be glad to learn her subjects were in such good health after the little series of misunderstandings. His audience received these rumblings with the stoic indifference they deserved. There was only one man they wanted to hear.
Pa did his job perfectly. There had been trouble. It was now sorted out. Soon they would all be leaving and life at the Villa Colonna would become normal again. He was grateful for their help and their loyalty. He hoped they would continue as his honoured guests in the villa as long as they wished.
A bottle of grappa was produced, glasses filled. We all toasted each other solemnly. Reilly, who had been studiously ignoring the proceedings, came wandering across when the scent of booze hit her broad-flared nostrils.
‘Here’s looking at you, Reilly,’ I said.
‘Motherfucker,’ she replied, taking me aback till I recalled that last time we’d met I’d had to thump her.
‘Don’t be a bad loser, Reilly,’ I said.
‘You look terrible,’ she said, examining my swollen ears critically. ‘I’m glad to see someone’s started what I hope to finish.’
‘I rather think you’ve lost your place in the queue,’ I said. ‘Besides, you’ve had your own back. It was you who rang Krylov at Teresa’s apartment to say I was probably on my way, wasn’t it?’
She nodded.
I said. ‘Don’t feel too bad about it, Reilly. At least it stopped him pulling her fingers off their joints.’
It was strange, she was as much my enemy as anyone else here, but the sight of those squashed up features beneath that lurid hair, not to mention those swelling breasts straining against her string vest like the fresh pink piglets against the chicken wire round the column stump, moved me like a friendly face in a jury-box.
I said, ‘Reilly, listen. You know they’ve got my daughter upstairs? Keep an eye on her for me, will you?’
She looked at me uneasily but didn’t speak. The Italians were being ushered out of the room, each solemnly shaking Pa’s hand in turn. The rest of us they ignored.
I said to Krylov, ‘You certainly know how to relate to the workers, comrade.’
He smiled and said, ‘The class characteristics of the peasantry are just as dangerous to the revolution as those of the bourgeoisie or the aristocracy.’
‘Hell,’ I said, ‘As an aristocratic peasant with bourgeois tastes, that makes me a pretty dangerous creature, don’t you think?’
‘Hard to breed in captivity, certainly,’ he replied.
The door closed behind the last of the peasants. The guy with the machine-pistol was now inside the room, I noticed.
‘Well, that seemed to go pretty well, I thought,’ said the Brigadier with the satisfaction of one who has just presided over a rather delicate social occasion.
‘Awfully well,’ I agreed. ‘So, what now, friends? A rubber of bridge?’
The Brigadier looked at me with faint distaste. Frivolity should be reserved for the Mess, after the loyal toast. Here we w
ere on the field of battle.
‘I think you can leave the rest safely with us,’ said Krylov. ‘Goodbye, Brigadier. Safe journey home.’
‘And you,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Come along, Miss Reilly.’
I coughed and interrupted their progress to the door.
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m your responsibility,’ I suggested. ‘We had a deal.’
‘So we did,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Something about—you kill your father and we’ll let you see your daughter, wasn’t it? Well, you’ve seen your daughter, I under stand, though you don’t seem to have killed your father. So on the whole I reckon you’ve done rather well out of it, wouldn’t you say?’
They left. Reilly didn’t even look back at me. That’s the payment you get for kindness. I wished I’d broken her head open when I knocked her out in Rome!
During these exchanges Pa had seated himself at a table by a window and was once more deeply immersed in his book. Krylov went and stood behind him and peered over his shoulder. They made a perfect study for a picture of the contemplative life. Pa with his white hair and patrician face was the Father Superior guiding some devout young theologian through the intricacies of an ancient text.
‘What now?’ I demanded, strangely irritated by the pacific scene.
‘In a little while we will depart,’ said Krylov. ‘In Naples harbour is a Bulgarian freighter, discharging its cargo. We join the ship and enjoy a pleasant summer cruise through the Mediterranean and into the Black Sea. There your father will resume his interrupted convalescent holiday, this time accompanied and attended by his devoted son. Is that not a pleasing prospect?’
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