Three-Cornered Halo

by Christianna Brand

  BREAKFAST on the island of San Juan is like breakfast almost anywhere else on the continent of Europe: something to recall in wistful retrospect through the long, bleak months between, but consisting in fact of gritty grey coffee, flaccid, white butter, rolls of very hard, sour bread and chipped saucers of extraordinarily nasty apricot jam. At the Bellomare, however, it is served on the terrace beneath the twisted grey bougainvillea boughs, looking out to sea; and here, on the morning after the fiesta di Boia, Miss Cockrill sat very complacently, caged into a square wooden garden chair and awaited her faithful Dick. He arrived at last, a trifle wan, and was immediately besieged by his flock. “Hey, waiter! Here, garsong!” cried the Major desperately, clutching at the coat-tails of the drifting waiters, “bring tea, this senora no want coffee, bring tea. And eggs. Eggsa. Eggsa and bacona. No want apricot jam.”

  “Si, si, Senor,” said the waiters, strolling away to bring coffee and apricot jam.

  “And be quick, hurry, despacio.…”

  “My dear Dick,” said Miss Cockrill, “‘despacio’ means to go slowly.”

  “Oh, does it? Well there’s no need,” acknowledged Dick gloomily, “to tell them to do that.”

  For the Major this morning was not his usual self. Awakening, ill at ease in stomach and head, he had lain for a little while conscious also of a dull cloud over the heart, which as his mind grew clearer had sharpened into a stab of realisation which filled him with a very genuine horror. Engaged! He was an engaged man. Last night—last night, and he must face it, he had drunk too much and had behaved disgracefully; had made a fool of himself, had been tipsily insulting, and finally had offered his hand, irrecoverably pledged his troth—for the Major with all his faults was a thorough-going gentleman—and to, of all people, Winnie! But Hat! He covered his large pink face with his hands at the thought of the interview to come, the white hairs of his moustache sprouting through his fingers like a handful of etiolated mustard-and-cress on a saucer of red flannel. All these years of weary pursuit of one whom he knew in his own foolish, faithful, and very lonely heart to be the one woman in the world for him: and a sunny day and a moonlit night had undone his work in an hour. Nor could he ever explain, even to Hat, that he had not been sober when he took the fatal step. Honour forbade. He must stick to his promise; and live out the rest of his life without even the comfort of her friendship left to him.

  There was a telephone at the bedside and he sat down at last, a saggy heap in candy-striped pyjamas, and reached for the receiver. “Winnie? I say—g’morning, old girl. Dick here.”

  “Major Dick!” said Winsome, astonished, automatically adjusting her nightgown at the sound of the male voice so vibrant in her chaste boudoir.

  “Not too early for you, old girl, eh? Fact is, Winnie, I behaved very badly last night. That business about Gloria Swanson.…”

  Winsome, also, had lain awake for some time already, her long face alight with nourishing cream, her hair kept in wave beneath a sort of net bonnet tying under the chin, which gave her the look of a huge, gaunt, glistening baby, preternaturally wise. But she did not feel very wise. The Mediterranean sunshine streamed through the slats of her shutters and in its gay sanity she looked back with horror to the events of the evening before. She, Winsome Foley, a cheat and a fraud, and in a matter of godliness; afraid for her freedom, afraid for her very life—at the mercy of a blackmailer, committed to some unholy adventure in partnership with a sloe-eyed gipsy who, had he dared ever to lean over the garden gate at home with his basket of brushes or offers to mend kettles and pans, would have been chased off with the business end of Brother Hoe! I must get away, she thought. I must tell Cousin Hat what has happened, I must confess everything to her, and ask her to cut short our holiday and come away at once.

  I must tell Cousin Hat. I must tell her that I agreed—I suggested—that a fraud should be perpetrated; that to this end I handed over the sacred book which was entrusted to my sole care; that I permitted that, in my presence, a forgery should be interpolated there. I must tell her that a great deal of this I did under the influence of drink: that I went alone with this man to his shop and allowed him to make me tipsy so that I should be brought to agree. I must tell her that from first to last, by flattery, he has made a fool of me; and that now he is blackmailing me into taking an active part.…

  If it were indeed blackmail. Perhaps, after all … She remembered the laughing eyes, the protesting hands: one must put oneself into the minds of these people, minds utterly different, ideas and ideals utterly different from our own. ‘I mean only that if you had not intended to go on with the plan you would surely not have altered the book.’ That was fair enough; and in case of discovery, he had been anxious for her protection, she must maintain steadily, he had said, that she had never touched the thurible; ‘whatever happened’ she must stick to that and he and the Archbishop would support her. And he had taken her arm and smiled and teased and said that it was an adventure, it was fun … Of course I must not take the censer, she thought; but I don’t really believe he was blackmailing me.

  And besides …

  Besides, if the adventure fell through—there was a great deal to lose.

  It was not for me, she thought. It is for Juanita. But what benefited Juanita, indubitably also greatly benefited herself. She caught sight in a mirror of the great baby face in its blue net bonnet, and turned away her eyes to avoid their own uneasy stare. Two alternatives—both very simple, and both of them terrible. To confess, to go home at once with Cousin Hat, and to live in the chill shadow of her scorn for ever; or to grow rich and independent of Hat—by carrying out the plan. There is no other way, she thought; and which am I to do?

  The telephone rang. It was Major Dick. Some gabble about Gloria Swanson. “Gloria Swanson, Major Dick?” Had the man gone mad?

  “Behaved like a cad, old girl,” said the Major, almost weeping. “I was drunk. Bound to admit it. Disgraceful business. Ashamed of myself.” His sad blue eyes stared out of the window opposite his bed at the cloudless blue of the Mediterranean sky. He took a deep breath. “Regard myself as an engaged man, Winnie, old girl y’know. Hope you understand that?”

  “Engaged?” said Winsome: absolutely incredulous.

  “By Jove, yes,” said the Major, loyally. (Happiest man in the world, eckceckra, eckceckra.) “Only for God’s sake don’t—well, I mean, let’s keep it a secret between ourselves for the moment, eh, what? I mean, on the whole, don’t say anything yet to Hat.”

  “No, all right,” said Winsome faintly. But the Major had rung off.

  ‘Engaged! To be married! All of a sudden to find it assumed that one was engaged to be married: all of a sudden to find oneself with a third alternative, after all. Weary and depressed, obsessed with her own anxieties, she had taken in very little of what he had said to her during the return from the pavilion the evening before; and remembered even less. But she recalled now that he had put his arm about her waist, had poked his moustache into her face as though to kiss her; and it was true that up at the pavilion he had seemed rather odd and excited, snatching drinks from the tray offered by the girl, Lorenna, and tossing them off in a sly sort of feverish way. Afraid of Cousin Hat; stoking up a little Dutch courage because he wanted to ask her to marry him, and was afraid of Cousin Hat. But she, no longer, need be afraid of Cousin Hat. After the long years of waiting, he had tired of Cousin Hat; and she, Winsome, had beaten Cousin Hat at her own game. Engaged. To be married. Independent of Cousin Hat. She would give the conspirators a chance, she would go up to the cathedral this morning and tell the Archbishop, quite coolly, that she refused to accept the censer or to have anything more to do with the plot; and if there was trouble, she would tell Cousin Hat, as coolly, that she thought it would be advisable if she went home sooner than intended. Meanwhile she would send down a message that she had a headache and would not get up.

  Major Dick was present when the message arrived and accepted it with relief. Later, Cousin Hat went up to the sufferer�
�s bedroom and said that really she was not surprised, last night Winsome had looked quite dotty, she had better stay where she was; she herself was going off on an expedition with Dick and the others to the village of Toscanita. Winsome heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves as the carriages assembled outside the front door, the hooting of the tourists as they piled themselves in (the widows packed into one carriage for their safety’s sake). The hooves clip-clopped away. She got up and dressed.

  And Mr Cecil also remained behind. Mr Cecil takes little pleasure in rural delights and he had been, moreover, charmingly piqued in his ever-sensitive curiosity, by the tenor of Tomaso’s leave-takings the night before. Alone among the group, Mr Cecil had known of a plot to doctor the Cellini thurible with an essence of roses: and why, Mr Cecil had asked himself, should the originator of the plot be gazing so meaningly into poor Foley’s stupefied face and insisting that she keep to some arrangement regarding that same thurible? He himself, Tomaso had insisted, again most meaningfully, would not be there. Mr Cecil decided that he, on the other hand, certainly would be there: and accordingly, that morning at eleven o’clock, presented himself, all eager-eyed at the sacristy door of the cathedral.

  Those who love the Duomo di San Juan, and they are not many, are apt to exalt it above all other cathedrals: though chiefly, they acknowledge, on the score of the saving in travel. For why, ask these Phillistines, dash from Bologna to Sienna, from Sienna to Ravenna, from Ravenna to Rome, when by staying quietly in one place you may see bricks as bloodily red as any in Bologna, a forest of American convicts’ legs more fiercely black-and-white striped than those of Sienna, mosaics more hideous and a front more putti-ed with babies’ bottoms than in all Ravenna or Rome? The Duomo of course was built by old Juan the Pirate—unique, perhaps, in having been erected in his own lifetime, to his own glory, by a man who had just canonised himself a saint (for the Patriarch of that day had had no foolish prejudices about applications to Rome). Having impressed half a dozen men of, unfortunately, varying talent, by the simple expedient of kidnapping them from the Italian ports where they happened to be working, he provided an armed guard to protect them from one another, and bade them set to. A native of Parma came out on top with a general outline of Romanesque basilica, in bright red brick (the guide book is surely incorrect in its figures?—32,453 metres by 6,420—for this would make it twice the length of St Peter’s and anyway a very odd shape), surrounded by graffiti pavements depicting scenes from the life of the saint in a version which that deplorable old party would certainly not have recognised, had he lived to see them completed.

  But the other protagonists struggled not in vain. Venice contributed domes of assorted sizes and peppered with nice, bright mosaics, there is a patchwork tower, à la Giotto, and of course the façade—the most somtous, the guide book assures us, of any in Europe. ‘Let’s now going up to the frontal,’ continues this work in its pleasantly informal way; and, conducting us thither, encourages with cries of uninhibited complacency our admiration of San Juan’s supremacy in a sort of Swedish smörgesbrod of marble. ‘Entering through portles of bronce into the specious interior, lets now revolving from left to right. Here we are hit by lots of thinks most marvelous and suggestive of which now we give to the reader the history the most briefly and faithful is possible …’ The tomb of the Founder, for example, credited to Canova (but not by anyone outside San Juan, the more so as he would at the time it was fashioned, have been about nine years old), the great marble font, piratical loot but not the work of either of the Pisanos, the murals of Goya; and, in a wrought-iron case, the Cellini thurible—which really is by Cellini.…

  El Anitra came shuffling out at Mr Cecil’s summons, his great flaming nose hanging like a beacon over the sad, thin mouth, the whole face mottled with colour, purple and scarlet as the feathers of the bird whose name he bore; the white, raised scar gleaming on the frontal bone. “I regret, Senor, infinitely; the thurible is removed for cleaning before the fiesta, it is not on view.”

  “Ooh, you naughty fib!” said Mr Cecil. “One of the tourists is viewing it this minute, I’ve just seen her arrive.”

  “Ah, yes, the lady; that is by special arrangement.”

  Oh, but one had a special arrangement oneself, said Mr Cecil. Last night he had been up at the pavilion: the Archbishop was doubtless aware of it?—and the Grand Duke.…

  “You have a signed note?” said the Archbishop wretchedly.

  Mr Cecil had no signed note. Understanding that Miss Foley had an appointment, the Grand Duke had simply told him to go along too.

  “I will speak to the lady,” said the Arcivescovo.

  But that, protested Mr Cecil, there was utterly, but utterly, no need to do. He was a friend of Miss Foley, she wouldn’t mind one bit. He followed the old man resolutely across the sanctuary and in through the sacristy door.

  The base of the censer was a large thing, as big as a rose bowl and enormously heavy, of solid gold wrought into a design of upward-bearing angels. Mr Cecil watched with malicious glee the Archbishop’s efforts to manœuvre it surreptitiously into the lady’s bag, the lady for some reason not co-operating; though he had understood it to have been all arranged, the night before. He succeeded at last and Mr Cecil, having foiled an attempt on Winsome’s part to leave the bag behind in the sacristy, emerged at last with her out into the sunshine. “Do let me carry your bag for you. It seems dreadfully heavy.”

  Quite all right, said Winsome. She could manage it herself.

  “But, my dear, what on earth have you been buying? Gold bricks?”

  No, no, it was just some—just some guide books.…

  “Very nobbly guide books,” said Mr Cecil, eyeing the distended bag with a mischievous eye. He tripped along gaily beside her across the cobbled cathedral square. “Where shall we go now? Let’s sit down and have an ice, and we can look at your new guide books together.”

  But Winsome had suddenly developed a passion to pop in (alone if it had been humanly possible but it was not) to the Joyeria; and, having with many explanations and excuses scribbled a note which she concealed in the shopping bag with the nobbly guide books, dragged herself there with her old man of the sea; and, after looking vaguely at some brooches which, said Mr Cecil had not been worth so imperative a visit, abruptly came away. This time he was content to allow her to carry her own shopping bag; it seemed so very much lighter.

  Alone in his shop, Tomaso locked away his little bomb carefully and turned his attention to the thurible. It was no longer true, of course, that the work could be made undetectable; to arrange the mechanism so that the bomb operated only when the censer was swung forward, was a different matter from concealing a pellet of essence. But until the event, no one would think of examining the bowl except possibly the old man and this foolish woman and neither of those two would understand what he saw. And after the event—there would be nothing left to examine. A tragedy, he thought, the artist for a moment overcoming the anarchist, to destroy so lovely, so wonderfully lovely, a thing. He turned it over in tender hands, tracing with his delicate fingertip the intricacy of moulding, laying his brown cheek against broad surfaces of gold made smooth as silk by the polishing hands of time. I will sketch it, he thought, and one day I will make another, as lovely if I can, to replace it. It should be his life’s hobby, his relaxation in the days of power to come.

  There was a note with the censer: it was in Juanese, not very well constructed or properly spelt, though she spoke it fluently enough, and tremendously underlined. Writing in a great hurry, under difficulties, she said. Had not intended to bring the thing, but had not been able to explain this to the Archbishop. So she had brought it. But this was the end, she would do no more. Well, all right, he thought, you need do no more—about the censer. She had known too much of the original plan, it had been necessary to involve her so that when the assassination took place, she should, to save her own skin, keep her mouth shut. But now she was involved, and as to taking the thing back, he could tak
e it back himself, easily enough. He was as free as anyone else to pray in Juanita’s chapel, he would go along with a couple of disinterested friends as future witnesses; he would put the parcel down somewhere, the Archbishop could pick it up. He thought with satisfaction of the forgery in the book, of the carrying of the censer, under the very eye of Senor Thetheelah; his Senorita del Opale was safe enough—when the time came she would not talk.

  A tourista came in. It was the fat man, the leader of the grouppa, the Major. Tomaso slid his work beneath the counter. “Bienvenida, Senor. Buon giorno.”

  “Yes, well, er, bwonjorny,” said the Major. He broke into French. “Dayzeery ern reeng.”

  “A reenga?” said Tomaso in English, not to be outdone. Sure thing, he said. With happy. One tiny!

  “Well, by Jove, er, not too tiny,” said the Major, thinking back to the noded knuckles of his affianced.

  Tomaso was mystified. They looked it up in the dictionary ‘Tiny: small, miniature, minute.’ “Poor feller means, ‘one minute,’” said the Major, going off into a guffaw in Tomaso’s face; but Tomaso laughed too, an excellent little joke. He congratulated the Major warmly upon what was evidently a conquest, promised to keep his secret, and repaid the guffaw by selling him at exorbitant price, an opal twenty times inferior to Winsome’s own.

  And that night there was a party at the Joyeria; or above it, rather, in the white-washed roof patio, looking out over the crooked-tiled roofs of Barrequitas and away to the sea. Tomaso had arrived suddenly at the Bellomare with pressing invitations to Senorita Cockereel, to her niece Senorita Foley, Senor Thetheelah—to those friends who had been so kind as to patronise his shop.… Major Bull, alas, he knew from a chat with him earlier in the day—when they met in the street, said Tomaso, prodigiously winking—was obliged to remain with his grouppa; but for the rest, there was always a reaction after Domenica di Boia, it was his habit to ask in a few friends, would they not come too and enjoy a real Juanese evening? To Winsome he muttered an urgent aside; this was the only way he could arrange to see her, she must come, something had gone wrong.…