They were eating small savoury doughnuts, an anchovy buried deep inside. Eugenio tipped his plate to make them run about. One fell on to the table, rolling towards his aunt’s wineglass. The severe-looking Donna Laura, Marchesa Vittoria’s unmarried daughter, had not spoken all through the meal. She looked now about to say something but instead pressed her lips together nervously. Norberto, the maestro di casa, passing the wine, scooped up the doughnut neatly.
Wine appeared in Edwina’s glass. Our own,’ Stefano told her, proudly she thought, ‘everything, you know, is ours. And this excellent bread…’ It was faintly yellow, very crusty. ‘All is ours. We are so fortunate that we have fruit, grain, meat – ’
Norberto was holding for her a large silver dish with what looked like slices of chicken. It was a Friday; from years of experience, even though abstinence had been lifted during the war years, she hesitated. Stefano said at once: ‘It is not meat. Rather it is fish. Tonno. Tunny, yes?’ She coloured and he said, ‘I think perhaps you are rather holy?’
Fanny, wineglass in hand, said loudly, ‘How assy– ’ Eugenio, waiting to be served, banged a tattoo with his pudding spoon. ‘I want,’ he declared. His mother, sitting next to him, put a hand over his wrist. Taddeo said, ‘But it’s good to be holy! You know that we have a Pope in the family? And not one of the rotters at all – he’s in the gallery of course. You shall see him.’ Fanny asked his name. ‘Paschal – three, four, I don’t remember exactly– ’ He waved his hand. She said coyly: ‘Why not again then, why only one in the family?’
‘Certainly it shall happen again. Perhaps the children of our children? But for now, Stefano and I, you see, we have other ideas. And Eugenio– ’ he shrugged his shoulders, glanced over at his brother – ‘well-he is hardly papabile …’
‘Taddeo!’ The old Marchesa drummed heavily three times with her forefinger on the table. No one spoke for a few moments. Eugenio, food on his plate again, was eating with gusto. ‘I am a naughty boy,’ said Taddeo. ‘Nonnina, so sorry.’
Donna Laura, who had not spoken yet, coughed discreetly. She said suddenly in a frightened voice: ‘What shall your visitors see of Rome?’
Stefano, turning to Edwina, said quietly, ‘We have many ideas – ’ But Taddeo interrupting, announced: ‘I am your cicerone. Stefano and I… you need no other. No, Uncle Frederick, it’s not your work…’ Edwina, feeling suddenly that she was being looked at, glanced over and saw that the old Marchesa was watching her carefully. Their eyes didn’t meet. She coloured. Turning to Stefano to answer him, she saw that he too was staring, at Fanny.
Fanny clapped her hands. ‘I want to see everything I’ she cried. ‘Please, when can we start?’
In the Borghese Gardens small children in white plush coats and white hats ran about. They looked hot. Their nurses, ribbons flowing, tried to keep them in order. The paths around the Piazza di Siena were shadowed by ilexes. Two girls came by walking very erect, an elderly woman watching their every step. Taddeo said :
‘Oh, but that reminds me, that is how – Maddalena and I we have had just such a Miss.’ He looked over at Stefano. ‘Stefano has different memories. He is much older, you see.’ Fanny asked, how old? Stefano said : ‘Already thirty-two. Taddeo is the baby, he is only now twenty-three – ’
Tell us more,’ Fanny said, ‘about when you were young.’ In the motor, driving through Rome, Stefano had said (in answer to Fanny’s ‘What’s that, why’s that?’) : ‘You must forgive, we are very ignorant. When we are children it was not the custom to explore. You understand me?’ He said with feeling, ‘Children – they were not the fashion. Those so boring afternoons. All the winter out with Miss in the landò –we ride to the Villa Borghese, Pamfili. And then when it is Sunday always the Pincio. And in the spring because we have no garden then to the garden of friends where we are running round the statues and are wet in the fountains. We learn nothing of Rome.’
But now, as they sat for a few moments out of the late afternoon sun, although she’d asked them to talk, Fanny was in fact doing it all herself. She prattled. She prattled as she had done on those visits to Bay, and perhaps because the four of them made a fine picture, people passing stopped to look. Taddeo said laughing : ‘We are not accustomed to behave so, habitually we are awfully correct chaps.’ Fanny told him that his slang was terrible, and that the sooner he got to England and changed it… He agreed humbly.
They walked through avenues of glossy magnolias. Further on the busts of noble Romans stood on marble plinths – many of them with broken noses. Napoleon was amongst them, odd man out : Uncle Frederick had told her earlier that he was there because Valadier, his architect, had redesigned the Piazza del Popolo, just below. On the gravelled terrace of the Pincio two small boys leaned over the balustrade for a spitting contest down into the square. A man nearby cuffed one of them and they made off. Edwina looked down : Below, motors coming through the Porta del Popolo circled the square. They appeared to her angular, anxious, without purpose. She looked beyond. The view coming into focus hit her.
Rome at her feet. Towers, churches, roofs, a misty bewilderment. The dome of St Peter’s, Hadrian’s Tomb – landmarks blurring then into the stretch of the Campagna. And beyond it all – the sea.
Stefano said, announced really : ‘All visitors to Rome, it is here they must commence. The seven hills. But not exactly. I show you – ’
Fanny, pulling her hat down, said : Taddeo, dear Taddeo, tell me, do you think I should get my hair bobbed?’
One of Aunt Adelina’s watercolours hung in Edwina’s room. She supposed it had been put there out of kindness. Fanny, pacing up and down (‘I get so restless’), hadn’t noticed it. ‘Your ceiling’s quite too perfect,’ she said. ‘Is that one of their villas painted on? I’ve just got cherubs and things – ’ She sat down on Edwina’s bed, ‘Isn’t Eugenio quite awful? And the marquess himself, he’s pretty feeble. Of course your aunt came from that old dragon’s side. Her niece. Isn’t that right? Only they’re all obviously part of one great big overbred family. Your aunt married really fresh blood with Uncle Frederick. Then they didn’t have children – ’
‘She was always ill,’ Edwina said, recognizing and dreading the turn of conversation. Fanny said : ‘I was thinking about that only the other day-if nuit blanche is a night without sleep then do you think manage blanc – ’
‘I don’t know.’ Why did I bring her? she thought suddenly. I’ve had more than enough. Fanny peered at the watercolour. ‘Is that meant to be Bay?’
Edwina said, ‘Do you have to be so absolutely awful? I mean – like today. And then this evening at dinner – ’
‘What on earth? I never heard anything so assy. They like it :
‘And – how you were with Uncle Frederick.’ Fanny burst out angrily : ‘You and Uncle Frederick! You take sides against me – I know.’
‘Fanny, I never– we never.’
But Fanny wasn’t listening. Turn that terrible painting the other way – I don’t want anything to do with it. Bay – and uncles. They make me sick : Her hair hung about her shoulders, vivid. Hissing at Edwina, she looked like some avenging witch : ‘If I tell you something, will you promise to tell absolutely nobody?’ She sat down again on the bed. She was half crying.
‘I found out the most terrible – I went over to Bay because I’d finished on the land and I hadn’t been, not really since Ben was lost. I went for the night, and while I was there, you know old Jane that Cook always used to go and see, they said she was ill and I was feeling all gracious in the morning so I decided to sit with her a bit. She was all alone and she grabbed my arm, looked in my face, “Who’s that, who’s that?” I said, “You know me-Annie Mitcham’s niece– ” but she kept on shaking her head, so I said in a saucy voice, “All right, who am I then?” and she said, “Annie’s” I was pretty impatient by now, she was being so assy. ‘That’s right,” I said. She thought that was a great joke, chuckling away to herself.
‘“Aye,” she said, “you’re Ann
ie’s right enow. Annie’s bairn – Whitby, Annie was, but she’d kin here. It wasn’t told, we none on us told…”
‘I didn’t know what to think. That was shock enough –Only there was worse to come. I was all agitated, I said, “But is Uncle James my father?” Only it didn’t make sense, because then there’d have been no difficulty about keeping me. I was getting desperate– I thought someone might come in, and then I’d never know – people had been so close, they might just deny it all – ’
She kicked off her slippers, drew her feet up on the bed. Edwina said, ‘If I’d known – ’
‘She seemed to forget it was me there listening. “Fine goings-on,” she said, “Annie falling like that-found herself a fine man she did, one with nowt to do but meet a bonny lass night times. And Annie’s dad, he’s away up to house, but the gentleman he’s gone-been waiting, you see, to go off foreign. But his sister’s there the while. His sister, they kept it, brought it up a lady, coming over here with all her airs each of her holidays – come to see her auntie. Auntie indeed. They give out the dad lost at sea…” ‘
‘Oh my God,’ said Edwina, ‘Fanny, poor Fanny.’
‘You couldn’t stop her, she was telling me all-how her sister had seen them together in ways you couldn’t doubt, and then Annie, who hadn’t wanted to say who it was, she owned up, and my grandad – it seems he was a man everyone knew and respected so that when he came up to see Marmee his word was enough. And – Marmee said straightaway that they’d have me. Because Uncle Clive had been gone some months by then…’
She had her arms round her knees, hugging them. Her head bent. She was half sobbing all the time she spoke.
‘I went back home and I tell you I didn’t wait ten minutes to say something, I was so angry I thought I was going out of my mind, you can’t imagine the feeling – choked right up to here. I could have killed, I could have murdered-and I shouted and shouted at them and then I started to cry. They were terribly shocked and frightened, I frightened them, Marmee sent me upstairs to rest-and then I suppose they talked it over because she came in and I was a lot calmer and she said then that Uncle Clive had been living with them just before going to Rhodesia and how he’d never settled to do anything before and this career was to be the solution-she said I wasn’t to think of him as anything but a wonderful person, he’d always been a perfect brother – it was just that he’d fallen in love where it wasn’t suitable and I must understand the difficulties of it all, that there was nothing to be done that wouldn’t have spoiled his chances of settling out there. And of course he felt very special about me and it was he who’d insisted I be allowed to keep in touch with my-with Auntie. Everyone had helped, she said, and one thing you could be certain was that no one in Whitby or Bay, no one would ever breathe a word – and then – just think Edwina – a silly ill old woman gives it all away…’
She straightened up, then she stared for a moment at Edwina. Her eyes were pink-rimmed, swollen. She said, more calmly : ‘So that’s how it is. Nobody is who I thought they were. I couldn’t go back to Bay now. I feel so odd about – her. And Uncle Clive. That’s the worst – I used to be so proud of him. Now I’m ashamed. Just thinking about – ugh … it made me sick –I didn’t want to be a nun after that – ’
‘Poor Fanny,’ Edwina said again, ‘poor Fanny.’ She put her arms about her. Fanny, sighing heavily, groaning almost, pushed her face into Edwina’s shoulder.
‘I’m all of a muddle,’ she said. ‘Such a muddle. Tell me you are too – ’
I am your cicerone, you need no other.
‘… What do we show you today? It’s not good to go outside everywhere when we haven’t seen yet inside. So many rooms – You understand we don’t live in it all and some are letted – on the ground floor for example. I’ll show you everything. Stefano, he comes later …’
‘… Here are the rooms where dear Adelina was, where she lived the last days – you see they are very beautiful… And here the rooms where Stefano will live, Stefano and his wife.’
It seemed to Edwina that the Palace had no end. And indeed, shaped like a figure of eight, it had none. Room leading into room into room : the eye could take in only so much. Images dissolved one into another. Ancient gold cornices perhaps, about damask-curtained windows, a mass of azaleas in oriental jars; paintings, tapestries, screens-and furniture. What must it have taken to furnish all this? Tall chairs, leather-armed, oak-backed, carved lionheads – all these fabrics and textures, gold, silk, satin, velvet. They were on the piano nobile where the present Marchese as head of the family lived. Coming along the corridor they met him now, wearing a mask. When he had passed Taddeo said, frowning a little : ‘I must apologize, awfully sorry – he is afraid again of Spanish fever, someone must have told someone that they know one who has the symptoms and because of this … He will sit in the motor like that, perhaps go to the Club… It’s – ’ he made as if to empty his hands – ‘he is not famous for courage.’ Still talking all the time as he walked them along he said, ‘He was, if you believe me, very good on the hunting field, that is where he has met Mamma.’
Fanny was very quiet. She had not spoken the whole of the tour. It had been Edwina who had made the appropriate comments, asked the right questions. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t prefer the subdued Fanny, at least here in Rome. But left over from the night before was a feeling of helpless sympathy : she herself could never have survived calmly such a discovery, such an upheaval. And underneath too, it was as if for half an hour she had been back to Bay. For had it not been Ben’s kith and kin they’d been talking of?
‘… Now you look at this tapestry. Mille seicento, I think, when it is commanded for a wedding …’
They stood at the head of a long corridor. Edwina said : ‘You could play tig here. Or hide and seek – ’ Fanny, coming to life suddenly, cried : ‘Please let’s!’ She grew excited.
Taddeo, laughing, said, ‘But it’s not new idea. We’ve been many years-as children but also when we’re much older. Myself and my friends most particularly …’
Stefano appeared beside them. ‘I’m glad I find you.’ Fanny had coloured : ‘We’re talking about playing catch, tig – ’
‘Roller skating,’ he said, ‘That is the best. You see it is quite perfect here-Before the War at the home of friends and many other places there were parties. Adults, you understand. Every guest rollerskating – it was for a while very fashionable. I made so myself.’
Taddeo said, almost vying with him, Edwina thought, ‘But the bicycles. The worst was the bicycles.’
‘Bicycles?’ said Fanny.
‘But yes. Here, on the stairs. Myself and my cousins – Stefano then was too old, too serious – we ride down together very fast, three together perhaps. Really it is spiffing fun and just a little dangerous, which is naturally why we like it. Of course they tried to forbid but then we continue. And then one day it’s not so good because we meet Norberto. He’s carrying a tray, wine, glasses. Of course we had warned – “we’re coming!”– but he doesn’t hear. Imagine-the mess, the broken glass, the wine like blood everywhere. No one’s hurt – except of course we don’t do it any more.’ He’d been waving his arms dramatically, miming with his body the bicycle descent. Fanny, listening intently, seemed to have come to life completely. Now he said : ‘But we bore you with our memories… She protested immediately.
‘Now we go last of all to see Nonnina. She has her own front door of course. I think she expects us.’
Edwina felt her cheek self-consciously. She’d looked twice already in one of the enormous gilded mirrors to see if the marks had faded-for this morning after a night lying on the embroidered pillowslip, she’d seen clearly on her face the imprint of a bird’s claw : creased lines, angrily coloured. It had crossed her mind that perhaps it might never fade.
‘Here Nonnina has her Wednesdays, when she is At Home. My sister comes over often. You will meet her certainly…’ They passed through a large drawing-room – with a piano – thr
ough another room and another.
The old Marchesa sat alone. She was not doing anything – That surprised Edwina. Taddeo said : ‘We have been showing – everything. Now we are all so tired.’ He kissed his grandmother affectionately. ‘We tell them the terrible story of the bicycles…’ Chatter flowing, he sat beside her on the sofa. As ever he seemed unable to stop : she made no effort to restrain him, smiling occasionally, even laughing. Her hands were clasped tight over her stick. Edwina noticed them : gnarled, brown-spotted. Her dress was of dark silk jersey, lace at her wrists. She said nothing. But she watched Stefano watching Fanny. And she watched Edwina. Her gaze could be felt, didn’t need to be seen.
‘Basta? she announced suddenly, ‘basta’ fingers opening and shutting on the cane, chewing the words. ‘Basta. You may go-today I am really a little tired? Then just as they were about to leave, pushing her stick forward she said sharply : ‘Edwina! I like you to stay.’ She turned her head slowly : ‘You will stay, please.’
‘Now, at first, I wish to hear why you are so sad? You don’t answer me? I hear something from Frederick – The War has not been good for you. Your brother – ’
‘Very early on.’
‘And for that there is still – a hole?’
‘No.’ Edwina hesitated : ‘I think I don’t– ’ Then she said firmly : ‘I’d rather not talk about it. Any of it.’
Men On White Horses Page 25
