by Francis King
Karen smiled down at the tablecloth, as if this intervention had given her extreme, but secret, pleasure and then looked across at him: ‘‘Don’t you ever drink?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘Smoke?’’
‘‘Sometimes.’’
‘‘And you eat some tagliatelle and say you’ve had enough,’’ she added in reference to his meal.
‘‘You should be up there,’’ Max said, pointing to the monastery.
‘‘Oh, but he isn’t dirty enough,’’ Chris protested, while von Arbach belched loudly. She glanced at him and then continued: ‘‘How that monk smelled! Did you get near him? He would keep button-holing me, not that I could understand a word of his lingo until he spoke French, and there he was leaning over me, right over me, and his breath was like a blow-lamp, and one could tell it was weeks, well, months or even years, since he’d thought of changing his clothes. I always thought cleanliness was next to godliness.’’
‘‘Next to godliness,’’ Frank Ross said. ‘‘But if you’re godly, why worry about the next best thing?’’
‘‘Hold tight, my dears,’’ Chris said, glancing over her shoulder. ‘‘Prepare for a shock. Here’s the bill, here’s the bill. Who’s feeling strong?’’
‘‘My party,’’ Max said, taking the grubby paper from an even grubbier hand.
‘‘Oh, but no,’’ Chris said. ‘‘And all Béngt’s stregas, and Tiny’s cointreau. And I ate much more than any of you. I don’t call that fair.’’
‘‘My party,’’ Max repeated.
Well, of course, he could afford to pay; he was rolling, absolutely rolling in it. And there they were with their wretched fifty pounds each. It was not as if he had even been particularly generous to them in the past. But they were all like that, all these Americans. Mean, just mean.
Chris smiled. ‘‘It’s terribly sweet of you. Tiny, Max insists on treating us to dinner. We really oughtn’t to let him, because I’m sure it’s something fabulous.’’ She watched Max closely as he counted out eight thousand lire, and was disappointed that the sum wasn’t more. ‘‘You are angels,’’ she said. ‘‘ You’ve been so good to us. Béngt, aren’t you going to say thank you?’’
‘‘Gratitude spoils what one’s given,’’ Béngt said, his head lolling on to one shoulder; he smiled vacantly, raised a hand to his mouth as if he were about to sneeze, and gulped some more strega.
‘‘What an original idea!’’ Chris laughed. ‘‘Anyway, Max and Karen, thank you very much from all of us.’’
‘‘I only wish it had been a better dinner,’’ Karen said.
‘‘Oh, but that wasn’t your fault, you weren’t to know,’’ Chris said clumsily. She looked round her: ‘‘ I wonder if there’s a ladies’ room anywhere. I awfully want to spend a lira.’’ Eventually she got up and going across to the proprietor who was sitting in the deserted dining-room within, reiterated: ‘‘Gabinetto, gabinetto,’’ insistently until she and Karen were led off through a labyrinth of corridors.
‘‘Cigar?’’ Max said, producing a case.
Béngt helped himself, Ross declined, and Tiny Maskell announced, oddly subdued: ‘‘I think I’ll stick to the old pipe.’’ He was slumped in a blue blazer which seemed far too big even for a man of his girth, as if the joviality had all run out of him through some invisible puncture. Suddenly he looked across at Béngt with his slightly bloodshot eyes and said: ‘‘I’d like to have a word with you alone, old man.’’
‘‘With me?’’
‘‘If you don’t mind.’’ He gritted his irregular, brown teeth on the stem of his pipe. ‘‘ Come for a little stroll.’’
‘‘Can’t we——?’’
‘‘A stroll will do you good.’’
Béngt tripped on the three steps down from the terrace and was only saved by Tiny, who put out an arm. The Swede giggled stupidly at this accident, and repeated, ‘‘Almost, almost, almost”, as if he could not believe his luck. He and Tiny began to walk down the whitely glimmering road, Tiny’s arm still round the Swede’s shoulder as he swayed and stumbled forward.
‘‘Fat lot of use talking to him when he’s in that condition,’’ Frank Ross said.
‘‘I suppose it’s about Chris.’’
Ross laughed. ‘‘Oh, I imagine something far more important.’’ When Max looked at him in interrogation, he said: ‘‘Money.’’
‘‘Money?’’
‘‘Hasn’t Karen told you that Chris told her that the allowance has still not arrived. This is the third week that they’ve had to pay his hotel bill.’’
‘‘At the Palazzo d’Oro? But how on earth do they manage it?’’
‘‘Precisely.’’
‘‘You mean——?’’
‘‘There are ways of making ‘ arrangements’. Two years ago it was pretty safe—if one used one’s common sense. But now …’’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘‘Chris is a fool. We would have lent her some money, if it meant that.’’
‘‘She’s a little afraid of you,’’ Frank Ross said. ‘‘She probably thought that it would be hard to explain. In Wimbledon, married women don’t keep their lovers.’’
‘‘Poor devil,’’ Max said, with genuine compassion, pulling at his cigar.
‘‘Oh, I don’t think she really deserves any pity, do you? She’s making such an ass of herself. Everyone must notice.’’
‘‘Certainly the hotel staff do. I’ve seen them smile behind her back.’’
‘‘And your children,’’ Ross put in softly.
But whether from disinclination or because he had not heard it, Max left this last remark alone. When he next spoke it was of the war in which they had both shared. It was an inexhaustible subject, and the only one which made them feel wholly at ease in each other’s company.
Meanwhile in the ladies’ room, Chris was saying: ‘‘ Oh, I can’t. It’s one where you have to squat, you know. In the Gare du something-or-other Tiny used one back to front and he went and fell in.’’ She began laughing and then all at once burst into tears.
‘‘Chris, what on earth’s the matter?’’ Karen asked.
Strangely, Chris’s crying had given to her the youthfulness which she had never been able to achieve by the Dauphin bob, her teen-age clothes, and her artificial girlishness. Like a child, she pressed her cheek against the flaking whitewash of the lavatory wall and blubbered without restraint.
‘‘Chris!’’ Karen said sharply.
‘‘It was awful having him speak to me like that, just as if I was dirt, nothing but dirt. Sometimes he can be so kind and then a devil gets into him and he hurts me all he can. It’s not fair!’’
‘‘Who do you mean?’’ Karen asked.
‘‘Well, Béngt, of course,’’ Chris snapped irritably. ‘‘Who else could I mean?’’ For a moment she stopped crying, but then once again she began: ‘‘He knows I love him and would do anything for him and instead of respecting that, he just trades on it, just trades on it, and uses me as he pleases. I might be a door-mat for him, really I might. Oh, I’m so unhappy!’’ Splinters of whitewash were lodged in her hair, and an enormous chunk lay on her cheek like a mound of sticking-plaster.
Karen hated this sort of emotional intimacy no less than physical intimacy; Chris’s outburst had affected her as she would have been affected if she had been called in to witness a surgical operation. But she steeled herself, and put an arm round the other woman’s shuddering body. ‘‘ Chris, you mustn’t be so upset, you mustn’t make mountains out of molehills.’’ No, she mustn’t; it made one feel sick, absolutely sick. Oh, why wouldn’t people show some guts, pride, control? Instead of parading their filthy little emotional wounds and abscesses as she had seen lepers in Egypt parade their sores. Shut up, shut up, she wanted to scream. ‘‘There there, Chris, Chris, do try——’’
But like most women who have been spoiled by their husbands, Chris was a connoisseur in sympathy and at once recognized the synthetic flavour o
f what Karen was feeding her. She was now horrified at her previous admission, and hastily whimpered: ‘‘Oh, I know that I’m being silly, because it’s not as if I were in love with Béngt. I mean, I care most awfully for him, and of course people being what they are, they think what one would expect. It’s just—just that having no children of my own—oh, it’s ridiculous of me—but I like to have someone to mother, and he’s always been so sweet and thoughtful to me, always, always. Except, of course’’—she gulped, and began to wipe the plaster off her cheek with a handkerchief she first licked—‘‘except when he behaves as he behaved this evening. And that upsets me, I don’t know why. I just can’t help it. I suppose I’m too sensitive. Tiny always says I’m too sensitive.’’ She blew her nose hard until it was the colour of the crimson varnish on her nails, and all at once giggled: ‘‘And now I suppose, I’d better try and use this thing. I’m sure I shall fall in.’’
Later, she and Karen wandered out into the overgrown garden which straggled behind the house until it eventually petered out in a tangle of briars, nettles and rusty barbed wire. ‘‘ Moths!’’ exclaimed Chris, and then more shrilly ‘‘Bats!’’: but she did not wish to be seen by the men until her eyes were less red, and so she endured these tribulations, walking up and down a dusty gravel path, her arm in Karen’s. ‘‘ Let’s sit down,’’ she said, pointing to a stone seat which glimmered in the moonlight. ‘‘What stars!’’ she exclaimed. ‘‘ What a moon! Don’t they make you feel romantic, Karen?’’
Karen laughed, but her whole being shuddered from this kind of sisterliness; she could tolerate it with no woman, least of all with Chris. ‘‘I’m not very romantic,’’ she said at last.
‘‘No, I don’t believe you are,’’ Chris said.
They sat mutely on the warm, pocked stone, one at each end, as if in acknowledgement that between them there was really no sort of contact. Yet the contact was there, had they both known it, since each was thinking the same kind of thoughts, each was hugging the same kind of secret. And the thought and the secret brought an extravagant bloom to Karen’s usually subdued beauty and gave to Chris a beauty she had never before possessed. For now she was beautiful, as she watched the bats wheeling and felt the gnats sting her ankles and mused, giving her whole being up to this voluptuously intense remembrance, of a few agonizing moments after a picnic in Epping Forest sixteen years previously, and of the weeks of lonely fear that followed. He had Béngt’s loose movements and hair of the same colour, the colour of condensed milk, and he, too, smelled of cleanliness, yes, smelled of it as these Italians smelled of dirt. He had worn a ridiculous white student’s cap which made him look like a petty-officer, and had boarded with her aunt in the flat off the Finchley Road. He had promised to write to her, and she herself had written, times without number; but all she had received was a postcard from Stockholm. The Town Hall and on the other side ‘‘Best wishes, Tore”. Oh, it had been cruel. But the smell of the crushed leaves, and that clean smell above her.…
Karen mused less sentimentally. But she, too, had stumbled on the lost, impossible ideal: discipline, heroism, austerity. And how she had despised her father through all those years, wishing that he would die. For when she was seven she had heard him scream out with pain and she, who could bear agonies without crying, had decided that he was no father of hers. She repudiated him, she cast him aside. Men were brave, men were strong, and he was not one of them. Year by year, he weakened and softened before her eyes, clutching at her with his insatiable demands, whimpering, moaning, sobbing out his complaints. And at the end screaming: ‘‘I won’t die, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!’’ as he would scream when the doctor had to cause him the slightest discomfort.… Oh, if one must die, one should have the courage of the beasts of the field and go and die alone. All this emotionalism, this give and take of sympathy, handing it back and forth like some flabby, liquescent horror: no, no.… But Frank, ah, Frank: and she thought of him standing and watching the game of draughts, his shoulders thrust back, his legs wide apart, his hands under the wide leather belt, and those deep, vertical lines which furrowed either cheek.…
‘‘Did you notice how Béngt smoked the cigar you gave him?’’ Frank suddenly asked.
‘‘No,’’ Max said. ‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Oh, I don’t know. He was watching you to see what you did. As if he didn’t know which end to put in his mouth. And then he left the band on. Odd.’’
‘‘Odd?’’
‘‘Well, with his background. I mean, you’ve heard his stories, haven’t you? Father Ambassador in Prague, later Paris. The vast estates. All that sort of thing.’’
‘‘Do you think he’s a phoney?’’
Frank shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘Wouldn’t be surprised.’’
‘‘But in that case we ought to tell Chris.’’
‘‘She wouldn’t believe it.’’ And he added, in his own mind: ‘‘Serve her right, anyway, if she wants to make a fool of herself.’’
‘‘I’m going to make some enquiries,’’ Max said. ‘‘I can do it through our Swedish office, and find out if there really is a Count von Arbach—and if he’s here in Florence.’’
‘‘As you like,’’ Frank said.
The two women appeared slowly out of the darkness, walking arm in arm; and because each still wore her secret like some transfiguring garment, the men thought, with astonishment, how beautiful they looked. Throats, arms, foreheads gleamed like snow in the moonlight: there was a soft swishing, as they climbed the steps.
‘‘Where’s my old man got to?’’ Chris said; and as she spoke, the garment disintegrated. She looked plain, dowdy and not a little pathetic, ‘‘And Béngt?’’ she added.
‘‘A stroll,’’ Frank said. ‘‘They said they’d be back soon.’’
‘‘Oh, there they are!’’ Chris exclaimed. She pointed up the road, ‘‘What are you two up to?’’ she shouted out, and there was a note of anxiety in her voice. ‘‘We’re all ready to go.’’ Béngt and Tiny turned on their heels and continued their even pacing, this time away from the restaurant. ‘‘Oi,’’ Chris shouted. She gave a piercing whistle.
Béngt looked round, and touched Tiny’s arm.
‘‘That’s more like it,’’ Chris said. ‘‘He’s walking awfully steadily for a man who was drunk. Awfully steadily,’’ she repeated, as if she had made some nasty discovery. ‘‘What have you two been doing?’’ she asked again, as, blinking at the lights, they mounted the terrace.
‘‘Oh, chatting,’’ Béngt said.
‘‘Chatting—about what?’’
‘‘This and that,’’ Tiny said. ‘‘I can’t really remember.’’
‘‘Anyway it’s made Béngt sober.’’ Chris swung her bag over her shoulder like a satchel, picked up her two bottles of red and green liqueur, and then said: ‘‘Well, shall be go?’’
Chapter Nineteen
IN the car, Karen stared at Max’s head for many minutes without speaking to Frank who sat in the back beside her. Chris Maskell had claimed Béngt for the Hillman Minx, though he would obviously have preferred the Packard.
‘‘Where would you like to be dropped?’’ Max asked, as they drove through the Porta Romana.
‘‘Oh, the other side of the bridge.’’
‘‘But can’t we take you to your door? It’ll be no trouble.’’
‘‘The bridge will do.’’
Karen again stared at Max’s head; it irritated her, the way he allowed his hair to grow on his neck before having it cut.
‘‘You must have your hair cut,’’ she said, and then turned to Frank: ‘‘Don’t be silly. Let us take you all the way. Why not?’’
He laughed. ‘‘Because you want to do it out of inquisitiveness, not kindness.’’
‘‘Well, it is funny that I’ve known you all these days and I still don’t know your address. Well, isn’t it?’’
‘‘I don’t mind your knowing it.’’ He mentioned a street and a number. ‘‘I haven
’t asked you there merely because there’s no reason for doing so. I have one room, at the top of the house, and you have to climb seventy-six stairs. No lift,’’ he added. ‘‘You wouldn’t like that. To-morrow I’m going to look for somewhere else. Oh, not because it isn’t comfortable. But I’m getting involved.’’
‘‘Involved?’’
He smiled. ‘‘Not in the usual vulgar sense in which one gets involved with one’s landlady’s daughter. They’re a nice family and they’ve been very kind to me. But I’m too much one of them now. If they drive out in the car on a Sunday I’m always asked, the children keep coming up to my room, and I can never get out or in, without a conversation. He’s a dentist, and a bad one. Can’t bear to hurt a soul, and so when he drilled a tooth of mine, left half the decay untouched. Two weeks later I had an abscess. Oh, they’re nice enough people, as I say, and the house is clean, and I have my room for a song. But I can’t bear that kind of proximity—the identities of others pressing on one so. No privacy. It just doesn’t do.’’ He looked out of the window as the car drew to the kerb. ‘‘You’ve brought me all the way. You shouldn’t have done that. How did you find the street?’’
‘‘When Max comes to a new place, the first thing he does is to buy a map,’’ Karen said contemptuously. ‘‘ He’s terribly thorough. And then he goes over square inch after square inch.’’
‘‘Good idea. I do the same.’’ When Karen attacked Max, however obliquely, Ross never failed to put in a word of defence. It was something Karen could not understand.
‘‘Good-bye.’’ Frank hurried away, waving one hand, and then ran back and put his head through the front window. ‘‘And thank you, thank you for everything—the drive, the dinner, everything.’’ He turned his head to the back seat where Karen was waiting: ‘‘ If you’re really inquisitive about my room, come and see it for yourself.’’
‘‘Now?’’
He laughed. ‘‘No, not now. I’ve told you they’re a very respectable, bourgeois family. But tomorrow, tomorrow afternoon—if you really want to.’’
