by Muriel Spark
‘I could tell you a lot about Michael,’ Mary said, ‘but as he’s your son it makes an obstacle.’
‘I hardly think of him as my son any more,’ Maggie said. ‘Michael can be very inconsiderate. I think of him more as his father’s son and if he’s anything like Ralph Radcliffe then you have a problem there. Ralph was a problem but very, very attractive. Berto is no problem at all, but it’s boring to go to bed with him, especially when you’re my age. In your case you have your whole lifetime in front of you.’
‘Not all of it,’ Mary said. ‘I feel I’m wasting my best years sometimes, and I know Michael’s got a girl in Rome, too. But I want to make a success of my marriage, I really do.’
‘You can always take time off,’ said Maggie, ‘while Michael’s in Rome with the girl.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t like to.’
‘You must think I’m pretty dumb,’ said Maggie, ‘if you think I don’t know that you take time off with Lauro.’
Mary said, ‘Oh, no! This is terrible. You mustn’t say such a thing.’
‘Keep calm,’ said Maggie. ‘Nobody else knows anything about you and Lauro.’
The girl started to cry. ‘I wanted my marriage to be a success.’
‘Go on wanting it, is my advice,’ said Maggie, while Mary dried her tears on a paper tissue from the box beside her and drank a large gulp of her vodka and soda, spilling some of it on her body.
They were in bathing suits on the concealed sun-terrace of Berto’s Palladian villa in the Veneto in the spring sunshine of 1975. They lay side by side on the dark blue mattresses soaking up the sunny vitamins of May in the hours between noon and lunch at two. Maggie reached out for her body lotion and smeared it over her legs, her breasts and shoulders, then, playfully, she smeared the remainder on her hands over Mary’s belly, so that the girl became less nervy; she lay back somewhat becalmed and murmured solemnly, ‘Lauro doesn’t mean anything to me.’
‘He satisfies the appetite,’ said Maggie, ‘but not the passions, I agree.’
A bright smile came suddenly to her face as Lauro himself appeared on the terrace, carrying a mute transistor radio and a bottle of Vermouth. ‘Why, Lauro!’ she said, ‘I thought you were taking the morning off.’
‘I shouldn’t have come to this house at all. I repent it. The staff is terrible. They are vulgar domestics. They hate me. I came to help you out. I should have stayed at Nemi where I work for Mary and Michael. I am not obliged to follow the family.’
‘Oh, Lauro, you can go back to Nemi any time you like,’ Mary said.
He removed his white coat, put the bottle on the drinks trolley and stretched on a mattress beside them, and then got some pop music on his radio.
‘God, Berto will see you, Lauro!’ said Maggie. ‘And I’ll get the blame for fraternizing.’
Lauro threw the radio to the other end of the terrace where it stopped playing; he jumped up in a neurotic fit, spitting Italian obscenities, put on his white coat, and left.
‘Well, I’ve finished with him as a person,’ Mary said. ‘He really means to get married to that girl in Nemi.’
‘You’d better keep him on as a houseman,’ Maggie said. ‘Trained servants are hard to get. And he is well trained, you know.’
So much could be recounted about the winter past, so many sudden alarms as to the whereabouts of Coco de Renault and so many frantic messages sent by telex to nonexistent offices far away; always, Coco turned up with an explanation and enough ready money to put Maggie back in a stable frame of mind.
He had on one occasion gently and consolingly hinted that she was the victim of the menopause, and this act of stupidity on his part nearly finished his relationship with Maggie, so violently did she react. Berto had to intervene and explain away Coco’s mistake. He told Maggie that Coco was probably in love with her. ‘This is a way in which a man in love tries to provoke a woman,’ he told Maggie. ‘When there is no hope for him, he provokes.’ And to Coco, privately, he said, ‘If what you think is true, as it probably is, then the last thing you should suggest is the truth, since the truth is the original irritant.’ Coco meekly humoured Maggie and presently told her that her financial affairs were blooming only a little less than her lovely self.
There had been so many bad scenes that past winter with Lauro, and a cruise with Mary and Michael for Christmas in the Caribbean, followed by a week together in New York where Berto joined them. Berto now expressed strong doubts about Coco’s integrity and escorted them home. Maggie defended Coco expansively; Coco was nagging her to have her portrait painted by a young artist friend of his.
And all along, Maggie had reverted to her passion for evicting Hubert from the house at Nemi. So much could be recounted. ‘Eras pass,’ said Hubert, in the new comfort of his life, ‘they pass.’ He had just read in the newspaper of 15 February that year that Julian Huxley and P. G. Wodehouse were dead: ‘The passing of an era…,’ the newspapers had commented.
But this day in May 1975, in the sun of the north Italian spring, chose itself from among those others to be that sort of day when complications ripen, since inevitably there is always one particular day when discoveries come to being, when incidents put out shoots and start to bring into force from the winter’s potentialities the first green blades of a crisis. Maggie and Mary stretched out on the sun-terrace before lunch while downstairs the probabilities foregathered to form what are the most probable events of all, which is to say, the improbable ones.
Meantime, Maggie said to Mary, ‘We should go off to Nemi soon. I have to get Hubert out of the house. The Church authorities should be on my side. He’s committing a great sacrilege in my house with that cult of his. He’s got to be exposed, because of course he’s sheer fake.’
‘I’d like to go to one of the meetings,’ Mary said. ‘If only I could do so in disguise. You know, Letizia Bernardini says the services are terribly elating, really like magic.’
‘Could we both go in disguise?’ Maggie said.
‘He’d be sure to find out. He’s very, very discerning,’ Mary said.
‘I could kill that man, I really could,’ said Maggie. ‘It isn’t so much the property, it’s the idea of being done down that makes me furious with him.’
‘Yes, and he wasn’t even your lover,’ said Mary, egging her on as usual, since the theme of Hubert had become one of Mary’s favourite serialized entertainments.
‘He wouldn’t know what to do with a woman,’ Maggie said. Twelve guests for dinner tonight; with Michael, Mary, herself and Berto that made sixteen. There were dinner parties practically every night. New friends, old friends visiting Italy from America, old and new friends of Berto’s. Maggie sat for Coco’s young artist; then it was Mary’s turn. ‘He’s got you both out of focus,’ Berto had said. In a world of jumping sequences, the problem of Hubert was a point of continuity, although Maggie herself had no idea how gratefully she clung to it.
Berto’s Palladian villa was a famous one. It had been photographed from the beginning of photography and, before that, etched, sketched, painted, minutely described inside and out, poetically laboured upon, visited by scholars and drooled over by the world’s architects. The Villa Tullio was indeed a beauty; the Villas Foscari, Emo, Sarego, D’Este, Barbaro, Capra, with their elegant and economical delights still in comparison with the smaller Villa Tullio, seemed to some tastes to be more in the nature of architectural projects and propositions. The Villa Tullio was somehow magically complete and at rest. It was a farm-house built for the agricultural industry of the original Tullios, for the charm of its position beside a reclaimed waterway and the civilized comfort of Berto’s prosperous ancestors. Now, the plans of this house, every angle, every detail of its structure, being known throughout the world, photographs of the interior and exterior, and the original plan of the lay-out from every side having been published for centuries in studious manuals and picture books, it was hardly worth the while or the price for a gang of expert thieves to send their men to case the la
y-out. However, they did.
It was ten minutes past twelve when two smart-looking men drove up to the marvellous front door in a white touring car. On to the upper balcony came Berto from the library where he had been glooming behind the french windows. Out he came into the shadows cast by the sweetness and light of that harmonious pediment. He did not recognize the people. They were too early for lunch, and therefore probably were not friends of Maggie’s. Most likely, then, they were visitors come to inquire if they could see the house. Berto’s arrangements for sightseers were very haphazard. He kept no porter at the lodge. While he was away his old butler was accustomed to use his sixth sense as to whom he admitted into the house and whom he sent away. There were no regular visiting days as had been established in the grand and more famous buildings of Palladio. Mostly, the visitors who wanted to see over the villa wrote in advance, or were written for by their universities or, as it might be, some friend of Berto’s family. It was well known that Berto had changed nothing of the structure; only, over the years, in the interior, had new drainage systems been installed and bathrooms fitted in.
Berto was proud of his Palladian jewel, and his heart bent towards the two arrivals with such a desire that they should be educated tourists wanting to see the house that he invested them at first sight with various nice qualities. They mounted the fine steps, a tall, white-haired man and an equally tall youth, presentably dressed in fresh shirts and pale trousers; they approached the house with the right visitors’ modesty and lost themselves under the balcony where Berto hovered and awaited their ring of the door-bell.
After a few seconds, during which Berto imagined them to be admiring the portico, that harmonious little temple, and the well-calculated panorama there from, the bell rang. Berto withdrew from the porch into the library and heard below the shuffle of Guillaume going to open the door. Guillaume was the old butler, who had been brought as a small boy from Marseilles sixty-two years ago by Berto’s father and who, having had no surname that he knew of, was long since equipped with one: Marsigliese; he fairly ran the villa, and Berto who had grown up under his eye rarely questioned his judgement. Berto enjoyed with Guillaume a kind of reciprocal telepathy by which Berto understood precisely which of his friends Guillaume meant when he said that the French had telephoned, or the Germans had called, or that the Romans might be arriving, although, in fact, Berto had a good number of friends who might fit each definition. Guillaume Marsigliese likewise knew exactly which Americans were expected to dinner when Berto said he had invited ‘the Americans’; no doubt there was a slightly different inflection of their voices for each designation, but no friend discussed between them in that way was ever confused with another. ‘The Americans’ also covered Mary and Michael, and, before her marriage to Berto, Maggie.
Now Guillaume had started to climb the beautiful sweeping staircase and Berto, to save him the fatigue, came out of the library door to meet him, leaning over the well of the circling banister.
Guillaume looked up. ‘People,’ he announced, without further elaboration— ‘Gente,’ by which he conveyed that the visitors were, as Berto plainly expected, people who wanted to see over the house. And the fact that he had invited them to wait inside and given them some hope that Berto would receive them demonstrated that he considered the newcomers not, so far, unworthy, without committing himself further to the road of positive approval.
‘A few moments,’ Berto said, giving himself time to put away the papers he had been studying and the visitors time, no doubt, to admire the care that had gone into the maintenance of the villa inside and out, starting with the hall and its superb outlook.
‘Go down and tell them to wait.’ His commands to the servants always struck Maggie and Mary as being on the abrupt and haughty side: they felt embarrassed and guilty when Berto gave orders to his old butler especially. But to Guillaume’s ears Berto’s tone was perfectly normal; the old man judged only what his master said, whether it was sensible or not sensible. Guillaume’s life had been considerably upset by the fraternization that went on between Lauro and the Americans. Now, he turned and shuffled to the hallway, deeming Berto’s orders to be sensible.
Berto descended in his own time and, courteously shaking hands with each of the men, inquired their names. At the same time he took in the well-silvered hair and the interesting light blue and white fine stripes of his trousers, the jacket of which he held over his arm. The younger man, who wore well-tailored fawn trousers of some uncrushable and impeccable material, was holding a shiny slim catalogue of an artistic nature. They gave their names, apologized for the intrusion, and asked if they might see over the exquisite villa. They bore no resemblance whatsoever to Caliban the beast, with intent to rape and destroy Prospero’s daughter who, some have it, represents the precious Muse of Shakespeare. ‘Come along,’ said Berto. ‘With pleasure, come along.’ The younger man left his catalogue on the hall table, while Guillaume came forward to take the older man’s jacket from his arm.
Meanwhile Maggie, on the sun-terrace, turned over her splendid body, winter-tanned from the Caribbean, and lay on her belly; she continued smoothing her arms with sun-tan oil. ‘I want my house at Nemi and my furniture and my pictures,’ she said. ‘It’s a simple thing to ask. That man makes me have bloody thoughts; they drip with blood.’
‘Do you think he’s practising some kind of magic?’ Mary said.
‘We ought to go to the police. But Berto’s so conservative,’ Maggie said. ‘Berto would prefer magic to a scandal.’
Lauro appeared once more, and sulkily ambled over to where he had thrown the transistor radio. He picked up the battered object, tried it, shook it, opened it and readjusted the batteries, but apparently it was dead from violence. He threw it back on the terrace floor and went to pour himself a drink.
‘Where is my husband?’ Maggie said, nervously.
‘Showing visitors over the house.’
‘What visitors?’
‘I don’t know. They just came and asked to see the house. Guillaume let them in. Two men, well-dressed.’
‘Berto will get us all killed one day,’ Maggie said. ‘They are all well-dressed. They could be armed. We could all be tied up and shot through the head while they loot the place.’
Mary dipped into her bag for her powder-compact and lipstick. She combed her long hair.
‘Your husband is too much a gentleman,’ Lauro told Maggie, ‘and old Guillaume is too much an old bastard in all the senses of the word. He never knew his parents. He was off the streets. No family.’
‘What recommendations do they have?’ Maggie said. ‘Who sent them?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps nobody. They are art historians.’
‘They are all art historians,’ Maggie said. ‘You read about them every day in the papers. And look what happened to me the summer before last at Ischia.’
‘Those were boys from Naples,’ Lauro said. ‘These men here are Americans.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Berto doesn’t ask them to stay to lunch,’ said Maggie.
Mary closed her powder-compact. ‘There are only six of us for lunch to-day. Two more won’t make any difference.’
‘They could tie us all up, shoot us, take everything,’ Maggie said.
‘I got a gun,’ Lauro said. ‘Don’t worry. I go now and get my gun.’
‘Oh, we don’t want any shooting!’ said Mary. ‘Please don’t start carrying revolvers in the house. It makes me jumpy.’
‘Lauro’s wonderful,’ said Maggie, standing up like a brown statue in her gleaming white two-piece bathing suit. She swung her orange striped towel wrap from the back of a chair and put it on, haughtily. Mary got up too, lean and long. ‘I’m going down to the pool for a swim’ she said as she too wrapped herself up neatly in a bath-robe.
‘I’m going to my room,’ Maggie said. ‘One thing they can’t do is see over my bedroom. I just won’t have it, even if it is one of the most interesting sections of the upper floor.’
/> ‘I bring you a drink at the pool, Mary,’ Lauro said.
‘Lauro, you’re sweet.’
They descended from the sun-terrace together, listening for voices but hearing none.
‘In fact,’ Mary said, ‘I think I heard them outside. Berto must be showing them the grounds.’
‘Well, if you’re keen to see them try to get rid of them before lunch,’ said Maggie. ‘I don’t want them to stay.’ She swung into the little lift that descended to her room.
‘Maggie,’ said Berto, ‘these gentlemen are staying to lunch.’
Two middle-aged women, Berto’s cousins who were expected to lunch, had already arrived and Maggie saw the two unfamiliar men chatting easily with them in the hall. The younger man was saying ‘Byzantium was a state of mind.…’
Maggie came over regally to be introduced, on her way passing the console table where the young man had left his catalogue. Mary stood with her back to it and when she saw Maggie she murmured, ‘The damn pool water wasn’t heated the gardener forgot—’
‘How are you? Come on in,’ said Maggie to her husband’s cousins, and then she held out her hand to welcome the new visitors who stood with Berto. The little group at the console table parted and Maggie’s eye caught the picture on the cover of the catalogue just as she had her hand in the elder art historian’s. She let her hand drop and her smiling mouth formed a gasp. ‘What’s this?’ she said, grabbing the catalogue.
It bore on its lovely cover, in tasteful print, the name Neuilles-Pfortzheimer, a Swiss auction house famous among collectors of paintings and fine arts. Under this was a reproduction of an Impressionist painting. ‘What’s this?’ Maggie shrieked, and the circle of friends around her stood back a little as if in holy dread. ‘What’s what?’ said Berto looking over her shoulder.
