by Muriel Spark
She jumped right into the nearest hooped enclosure and swung her white shawl wide. ‘Dance?’ he said. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said. But he laughed with delight and stepped over the railing into the magic rose-bed ring. All round the rose-bed they tripped, she flapping her shawl while Arnold took off his scarf and waved it wildly in the air. They jumped a sort of polka-step hand-in-hand, all round the grass surrounding the roses. ‘Now the other side of the path, their other private rose-bed,’ Lina commanded. ‘It’s fun. Only you and I. The two old women will never know.’ She had seen two figures at the landing-stage, crouching, peering through the gate.
Arnold leapt after her to the other rose-bed. ‘What does it matter,’ she cried in Italian, ‘who sees us?’
‘My dear, I don’t follow your Italian. You talk so fluently and I’m slow. But I tell you I’m having the time of my life. Sorry if I’m a bit breathless.’
She began to sing a song in another language strange to him, probably Bulgarian, and danced by herself with her white shawl flying. Arnold followed as best he could. ‘Hooray!’ he cried.
The oars by the water-gate began to splash. Lina stopped to listen and put out her hand to stop Arnold, too. ‘It’s only that couple going away,’ she said.
From the canal came a burst of a man’s laughter. It was a convulsed sound. Then the effort of rowing must have overtaken the man, for his laugh became intermittent as the boat receded down the canal. A woman’s laughter mingled with the man’s, in the distance, before the boat turned the corner.
Lina, too, was laughing, standing on the path, pulling her shawl about her. And Arnold laughed with her.
Those people must have watched us,’ Lina said, and laughed again at the thought.
He said, ‘As well they don’t know us, isn’t it? Well, that was a Venetian adventure, my dear you’ve made my holiday. Golly! As well my wife Anthea can’t see us.’ And he laughed to himself as one who, having been cheated of many things, has in some small way recuperated his loss.
Chapter Fourteen
‘HIS NAME IS B.,’ SAID VIOLET, ‘so far as I’ve ever known or, I suppose, ever will know. The organisation, as you know, is called GESS which stands for Global-Equip Security Services.’
‘But you sent for him,’ said Curran.
‘No, I did not.’
‘I can’t believe that you did not.’
‘Believe or not believe,’ said Violet. ‘He was annoyed, in fact, that I had not sent for him. I didn’t tell you at the time; it wasn’t important. I had one little job to do: investigate Arnold Leaver and Mary Tiller. When I found out that it was a perfectly banal affair with no prospects I sent back a message to GESS saying just that. I didn’t mention you; I had no reason to. He thinks I should have done.’
‘Mention me? Why?
‘Because you were connected with Arnold Leaver’s son and you are rich, and I knew it.’
‘Violet, I don’t know if I can trust you. What brought him here?’
‘He heard from someone else that you were involved with Robert and that Robert’s missing. Word gets round.’
‘What is he here for? What’s his purpose?’
‘Business.’
‘Violet, you have a sinister side and I’ve always known it. You mean, blackmail.’
‘Persuasion,’ she said, ‘is the phrase he prefers.’
‘Does he know what Robert’s doing to us? Does he know where Robert is?’
‘Yes, he does,’ she said.
‘My God! How did he find that out?’
‘I told him,’ Violet said. ‘And I want you to understand that I’ve acted for the best. GESS are professionals, whereas Robert and the Butcher are amateurs. B. of GESS can put them in their place. He can give us immunity at bargain price.’
‘It’s a trick,’ Curran said. ‘I hate being a wealthy man; I hate it.’
‘Easily remedied,’ Violet said.
‘I suggest,’ said Curran, ‘that you start first. Give away your palazzo. Give away your jewellery. Give—’
‘What palazzo? What jewellery? I’m nothing but a landlady and my jewellery’s in pawn for safekeeping.’
‘Pay Mr B. of GESS the bargain price yourself,’ Curran said. ‘Why should I pay?’
‘Sooner or later,’ she said, ‘you’re going to be kidnapped.’
‘Here in Venice, it wouldn’t be easy.’
‘But somewhere else in the world—’
‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘I don’t have regular habits. I’m here, I’m there and I’m everywhere. It’s the people with regular habits who generally get taken.’
‘You don’t have bodyguards.’
‘Bodyguards are a kind of prison. I find this conversation distasteful.’
‘And me,’ said Violet. ‘It’s as if we’ve fallen into a calculated trap.’
‘It’s exactly,’ he said, ‘as if Robert had planned our reactions.’
‘Don’t you detest Robert?’ she said.
‘Perhaps I always did,’ he said.
‘But he’s surprised you.’
‘Yes. Oh, yes. He’s more interesting than I thought. From the objective point of view I’d rather read those notes and letters of his than listen to his wild ideas for theses that he never got down to. I’ve listened for two years, one after the other. From the objective point of view—’
‘How I envy,’ she said, ‘your being rich enough to take an objective point of view in a case where you’re involved.’
‘It’s only because of my money that I’m involved in the first place,’ he said. ‘And, I have to admit, it’s only because of my money that you are involved, and Mary Tiller—’
‘That’s why,’ she said, ‘I confided in B. of GESS. I did it on impulse, and I’m glad. I was stunned when he called here this evening; he had just arrived in Venice and came straight here.’
‘He questioned you about me.’
‘Oh, yes. He knows all about you. He seems to know your very banking secrets. Maybe he doesn’t know everything, but he seems to. He was resentful I hadn’t told him before that I know you.’
‘I hope that’s true,’ he said.
‘It is true. I didn’t bring him here. Anyway, I told him about our present difficulties. He can settle the matter for half a million. That gives you immunity for now and the future, according to him.’
This made Curran laugh, to her relief. ‘And the future …’ he said. Something about the phrase amused him greatly, so that she said, ‘I know he can’t guarantee anyone’s safety for the future. I’m just telling you what he said.’
‘How is he going to stop the Butcher’s gang?’
‘Is it a gang?’
‘I really don’t know. So how can your friend B. know?’
‘He’s not my friend. But I’ve got confidence in him. GESS are organised. They can get in touch with anyone if the job’s big enough, any territory in the world. They can tap telephones, they can hide radiation devices in umbrellas, coat buttons, tooth stoppings; they can bribe the filing clerks and photocopy computer information; they—’
‘You mean persuade the clerks,’ said Curran.
‘I mean persuade.’
‘And half a million dollars will be final?’ Curran said.
‘He thinks so, Curran. Relatively speaking, B. of GESS is a godsend. I’d rather deal with a professional businessman, honestly I would, than a gang of evil amateurs. Wouldn’t you?’
Tuesday night came to an end as Curran agreed. He stayed with Violet another hour, refusing to talk about the business, and wondering very much why he still admired her.
Wednesday morning.
‘May I speak to Mr B.?’ said Anthea, having telephoned to the GESS office at Coventry. ‘Mr B. is away from the office. Who is speaking?’ The GESS pamphlet which she had picked up to get the telephone number, trembled in her hand. ‘It’s Mrs Leaver, one of his clients. When will Mr B. return?’
‘Mr B. is abroad for a few days. Can I take a message?’
‘Very well,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll give Mr B.—’
‘You see,’ said Anthea, ‘it’s a question of my son’s privacy. I don’t want—’
‘We prefer not to discuss details on the phone. I’ll give Mr B. your message.’
The girl had hung up. Anthea looked at the trembling folder in her hand. She felt deprived of Mr B. The folder was looking worn from use. Anthea opened it flat, yet once more. Missing persons. … Backgrounds checked. … But for ‘backgrounds’ she first misread ‘blackguards’; it was a dark overclouded morning and very little daylight penetrated the sitting-room. She put up her hand to switch on the standard lamp by her side and it glowed under its silk-fringed shade. Fidelity Department. … Bureau of Ethics and Charisma. …
The telephone rang. It was a married woman-friend wondering if she were free for dinner that evening. Anthea lost her friend for ever by snapping that she was never free for dinner without a week’s warning.
Lina Pancev, the day after the night she danced on her father’s grave, all unknowingly then and indeed for ever, felt she had effectively put Robert in his place by dancing, at his bidding, but with his father. She had recognized Robert’s laugh and taken it for bravado in front of his new girl-friend.
Lina had connected his disappearance from her life only vaguely with his discovering that Arnold was in Venice with Mary Tiller, his disagreement with Curran (‘I told him to go to hell’) and possibly some jealousy of Leo. She felt she had been badly used by Robert. He had sent her messages, flowers, indirectly and in the third person, using his new girl, had tried to make her into a dancing exhibition at his bidding. That she had taken his father along to the midnight show at the Pensione Sofia gave her a lively sense of justice having been done.
Violet had suddenly told her not to go shopping at that special butcher any more; this upset Lina because she counted this butcher, Giorgio, as a friend of hers. She had found Giorgio’s shop in a crumbling building, overhung with brave geraniums, in a poor part of Venice. He had given her cheap cuts of meat for stew, and had saved up that lard for her which she set much store by. Now, Violet, who had at first been delighted when Lina had undertaken to do the shopping economically, had warned Lina off her butcher. And seeing Lina’s resistance, Violet had declared a Month of Vegetarianism for the Ca’ Winter.
‘You can’t impose the vegetarian on me,’ Lina said. ‘I’m entitled to my meals as I want them if I work for you.’
Violet had seemed to Lina to be rather sick-looking in the past few days, and Lina told her so, ignoring Violet’s rage. ‘What do you mean,’ Lina said, ‘that I have to leave the job with you? I have my rights to my job and my bed and my food, or you pay me big compensation. You better buy meat for my supper. For lunch, I am invited out to the Hotel Lord Byron.’
As she left the house there arrived by water-taxi a man with a smiling face. He seemed to be smiling at Lina and she stopped on the footpath before putting up her umbrella against the heavy rain. She looked at him to see if she recognised him, but it seemed he was not smiling at her at all, for he went right into the hall and went up the stairs to Violet’s flat. Lina then assumed that he was one of Violet’s lovers, put up her umbrella, and went her way along the narrow pathway, round the corner, and into the criss-cross of streets under the pelting rain. It was ten o’clock in the morning. She was due at the Lord Byron to lunch with Arnold Leaver at one o’clock. She decided that having prepared the breakfast and put the dishes, including those from Violet’s supper last night, into the dishwasher she would take the rest of the daylight hours to herself. Let Violet do her own vegetarian shopping. On a day and in a place so very watery, after the excitement of last night’s triumph-dance among the roses followed by a brief sleep and then the clearing away of dishes in Violet’s greyish kitchen, Lina worked herself up as she plodded, against the suggestion of a vegetarian au pair job. She went into the Academy to look at some pictures, and indulged her mood by reflecting that there were just as good in Bulgaria’s museums. She slopped over the great square to St Mark’s to look at the mosaics and actually said out loud, in English, to a group of five ardent Americans, ‘We have also in Bulgaria.’ The Americans, three men and two women, responded only by moving closer together so that individually they were more like limbs of the one body than they were before.
Lina wanted a coffee but she grudged paying the money at a bar seeing that she was entitled to her morning coffee at home. She recalled that her lodger, the Ethiopian student, who had paid her three months’ rent in advance, had also, while handing over the money, thrown in a friendly invitation to come and visit him whenever she wanted. He had given her a grand smile such as only people who have nothing to lose and nothing to gain can give away; at the time she had felt a slight envy for that spontaneous flash of huge yellow-white teeth in the darkness of his face, and the sheer largesse which her lodger was capable of scattering so easily, with only a smile. Lina went off, heading among the puddles, to her old eyrie, telling herself righteously that she ought to see how her tenant was treating her flat.
‘Do you mind if I come in for a few moments?’ she said, walking into the room. She was delighted to find her tenant at home; obviously he had not long got out of bed. He wore only his trousers and he turned to rummage among the bedclothes for his woollen pullover after he had opened the door. Now Lina saw there was another man sitting in the room, dark and thin-faced. He was biting into a pear. The image of Serge, her second cousin, her Bulgarian companion of past years who had put all the ideas of foreign travel into her head, now jumped before her eyes and was gone; she looked closer as he smiled, sitting with the pear in his hand. He not only looked like Serge, he was Serge.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lina said, weakly.
‘I’m looking for you.’
The Ethiopian said, ‘He came here last night so I made him sleep here. Another has been looking for you. Your landlord, he wants his rent. I told him you had rent from me and he was angry. Did I say the right thing, the wrong thing?’ He always communicated in English with an American inflection, this being his second language.
‘You can have your rent money back,’ Lina said. ‘Serge, tell this man he has to go away. This is my room.’
Serge took a final bite of the pear and placed the core on a saucer, took out a packet of cigarettes, offered one to the Ethiopian and took one himself. ‘Nowhere to go,’ said the Ethiopian.
‘Go back to your own country,’ Lina said.
‘Who me?’ said Serge.
‘No, him’
‘Have you read the newspapers?’ said the Ethiopian student. ‘What home, what country?’
Serge said, ‘I know her. She doesn’t mean these things. She’s got a shock to see me, that’s all.’
‘How did you get into this country?’ Lina said to Serge in Bulgarian.
‘By tourist visa,’ he said in the same language. The Ethiopian looked downcast.
Serge looked round the room. She had left behind some of her drawings and paintings when she had moved to Violet’s. He pointed to a painting which was propped against the wall. ‘That’s your new work?’ he said, continuing their Bulgarian conversation. ‘Venetian fishermen?’
‘Of course not. Those are men fishing by a bridge in Paris.’
‘They look too prosperous and contented,’ Serge said. ‘In the west, the proletariat are not like that. You are painting propaganda.’
‘You’ve come to spy on me,’ Lina said, crying.
‘No, I’ve come to take you back. It will be quite all right, no unpleasantness. I’ve arranged everything. I have a very good job.’
The Ethiopian was putting on his shoes. ‘You like me to leave you alone some hours?’ he said.
‘Certainly not,’ Lina said. ‘I have a date for lunch with a gentleman. Thank you very much.’
‘Anthea, this is Grace. So glad to catch you in.
I want to tell you that Mary Tiller moved out of the Hotel Lord Byron this morning. She’s moved back to my Pensione. There’s been a complete break with Arnold for some reason. I told you it wouldn’t last. Leave it to Grace.’
‘How did you manage it, Grace?’ said Anthea.
‘Well, it largely managed itself. I think Mary began to get scared for some reason.’
‘Scared?’
‘Of her reputation and so forth.’
‘She should have thought of that in the first place.’
‘Too true. Anyway I said to her, “Mary, you take my advice and come over to my Pensione. There’s more going on there.”’
‘Is Arnold coming home, then?’
‘Oh, well, of course, I can’t tell you that. He’s taken a paternal interest in a foreign girl student, but only paternal. I only know what I see. I told you Mary Tiller’s a nice woman at heart. You would like her, really you would, Anthea, if you only got to know her.’
‘Should I ring up Arnold?’ Anthea said. ‘Poor man, all on his own there in Italy. The things I read about Italy.’
‘I wouldn’t run after him if I were you’ Grace said. ‘Let him realise where his bread’s buttered.’
‘Has Robert come back to Venice?’ Anthea said.
‘No sign of him, and a good thing too. He only upsets the apple-cart; though he’s your son, Anthea, I have to say it.’
‘That Mr Curran still around?’ Anthea said.
‘Oh, yes. Curran’s a very nice person, really.’
‘I don’t deny it,’ Anthea said. ‘He was a good friend to Robert, giving him free digs and all that. I didn’t ever tell Arnold because he’s got such a suspicious mind. As if he didn’t know his own son, as I do. But if you ask me, I’m sure Robert will be glad to go back to Paris to Curran’s flat. Grace, you know, I’m only trying to piece together the picture.’
‘Why don’t you come here yourself?’ Grace said.
‘Oh, I couldn’t do that. There’s the fish and so on.’ Anthea looked at the goldfish as she spoke, darting round the fresh, bright bowl that fitted in with every other shiny and spotless thing in the living-room. ‘Let me know, Grace,’ she said, ‘as soon as you hear word of Robert.’
