The Dividing Stream

by Francis King

  ‘‘I—am—working,’’ Lady Newton said loudly and slowly in Italian. She gulped some gin. ‘‘I—am—working,’’ she repeated, and with each word the old servant’s nose twitched as if she were smelling rather than hearing what was being said. ‘‘Lunch—will—be—at—two. I—must—not—be—disturbed.’’ She then gestured the woman out of the door, turned the key and, curling herself up on a sofa where an ancient spaniel already wheezed and snuffled, at once went to sleep.

  She was woken by the sound of Maisie Brandon knocking, rattling the door-handle and calling: ‘‘Are you there, N.?’’ The spaniel was languorously scratching a tattered ear. ‘‘I say, N.?’’ Lady Newton jumped up, pulled open one of the card-indexes on her desk and arranged some sheets of foolscap-paper; then she growled: ‘‘What the hell is it?’’ Her voice had an amazing range, from the soft, apparently timid soprano of the governess or lady-companion she so often appeared to be, to a basso profondo.

  ‘‘It’s me—Maisie. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’ve brought that boy.’’

  ‘‘Boy? What boy?’’

  ‘‘The boy I told you about. At breakfast this morning.’’

  ‘‘You never told me about any boy.’’ But the door was at last unlocked. ‘‘Really, Maisie, once and for all, you must understand that when I’m working, I’m working. And must not be disturbed. Must—not,’’ she repeated slowly and emphatically, as if she were talking to the deaf Maria.

  ‘‘Yes, I’m sorry, but it’s past one o’clock, so I knew you’d be breaking off for lunch.’’

  ‘‘Today lunch will be at two,’’ Lady Newton said, without any further explanation. She looked Enzo up and down as he stood, in the middle of the hall, his head bowed and his hands clasped before him. ‘‘And who is that?’’

  ‘‘Oh, don’t be tiresome, N.,’’ Maisie Brandon said. Weary, hot and hungry, she had just asked at the Palazzo d’Oro for a room at the week-end. ‘‘You can’t have forgotten in these four hours. I told you that I had a servant for you.’’

  ‘‘Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?’’ Suddenly Lady Newton sniffed: ‘‘What’s that scent you’re wearing,’’ she demanded.

  Maisie told her.

  ‘‘Well, I don’t like it,’’ Lady Newton replied as the dog thudded down from the sofa and tottered towards them, stopping at every yard to scratch at its ear with short, staccato yelps. ‘‘What is it, darling? What is it then?’’ Lady Newton picked up the animal and holding it like a baby kissed each of its paws in turn and then kissed its nose. Suddenly she looked up at the impatient Maisie: ‘‘I told you not to use the car in the mornings. You know I explained that I must have Giorgio for the kitchen while Maria is single-handed. It’s so thoughtless of you, Maisie, really it is. You can easily take the bus.’’

  ‘‘But I asked about the car, and you said——’’ Maisie began in a voice of controlled rage. But she was at once interrupted:

  ‘‘What were you doing in town anyway? The hairdresser? That’s the second time this week.’’

  ‘‘You know I’ve got to dine with the Consul——’’

  Lady Newton threw back her head and guffawed so loudly that the dog squirmed and wriggled in her arms, rolling its puffy, red-rimmed eyes. ‘‘Who ever heard of spending money on a hair-dresser before taking pot-luck at that household? Don’t be ridiculous, my dear.’’ The story was that when the Consul’s wife had asked her to dinner Lady Newton had written back that she would be delighted to come provided that she was not expected to return the invitation. ‘‘Well, let’s see the boy.’’ She dropped the dog and strode across to Enzo, looking him up and down. He blushed, shifted like a startled animal, and eventually raised his eyes to give her an embarrassed smile. That morning he had put on clean clothes and his mother had given him the money to have a shave and hair-cut. ‘‘Looks as strong as a horse,’’ Lady Newton said with approval. ‘‘ He’ll have to be, with all there is to do.’’ In Italian she said to him: ‘‘From eight to eight. All meals. Six thousand lire a month. All right?’’

  The boy nodded but Maisie cut in:

  ‘‘My dear N., six thousand lire—that’s a beggar’s wage! It’s less than three pounds a month.’’

  ‘‘Mind your own business,’’ Lady Newton said casually and then, after a moment’s deliberation, twisting her lower lip between her gardener’s-boy fingers, she added: ‘‘Let me tell you that there are thirty thousand unemployed in Florence alone. I’m going to feed the boy. I shan’t feed him well, but at least he won’t be hungry.’’

  ‘‘I don’t know how you have the face to offer anyone such a—such a——’’ But indignation came naturally to Maisie only when her own interests were involved. ‘‘Well, I’ll leave him to you,’’ she said. ‘‘I must go and get ready for lunch.’’

  ‘‘It’s not till two, don’t forget.’’

  ‘‘But I’m famished!’’ Maisie wailed, with far more distress than at the mention of Enzo’s wages. ‘‘ No, really—it’s going a bit far!’’

  Lady Newton merely ignored this protest. ‘‘Come,’’ she said to Enzo, and going to the end of a corridor, lined with large brass pots, some empty, some containing umbrellas or the yellowed, trailing remains of plants, she again bawled: ‘‘Ma-ri-a!’’ But though she continued to shout the name down the echoing passage, on this occasion no shufflings, scrapings and rustlings announced the woman’s approach. ‘‘Damn! … Oh, well, you can start scrubbing this floor. It hasn’t been done for months. Come on.’’ And because Enzo, in his confusion, was slow to follow, she caught him by the arm and began to push him before her towards a door. ‘‘Open the door,’’ she commanded. ‘‘Bucket—cloth—soap. Don’t be so clumsy, put the soap in your other hand! Like this.’’ Suddenly she grabbed all the articles from him, only to give him back the bucket. ‘‘ Tap over there. No—use your eyes. Over there! Fill the bucket—good lad. Never mind if the water splashes on the floor, you have to scrub it later. All right? Now, down on your knees.… No, no, no!’’ she expostulated in irritation. ‘‘Give it to me, give the cloth to me.’’ She pulled up her shapeless tweed skirt and then knelt beside him. ‘‘ Like this.’’ Energetically she began to scrub the cracked and dusty tiles. ‘‘Put all you’ve got into it.’’ She panted, obviously doing this herself. ‘‘ There’s nothing like hard work.’’

  In the end she left him and there was silence in the corridor except for the splash of water, the swish of the cloth, and the boy’s heavy breathing. Now that he was alone he worked with a violent efficiency, as if he were scrubbing out the traces of a crime, never once pausing, never once slackening, though the sweat poured down his face. He was working, and he had not worked for two and a half years; in that knowledge he experienced an exaltation of the spirit, he recovered his essential manhood. The blackened tiles were slowly polished to whiteness; the water in the bucket foamed with dross and scum. His knees were already sore, his arms and back ached. But he was hardly aware of these things; and it was with the sense of being roused from a long dream that he at last heard Lady Newton bark:

  ‘‘Boy! I say, boy!’’

  ‘‘Yes, signora.’’

  ‘‘Go and find that woman. Ask her what’s become of lunch, tell her it’s half-past one.’’

  ‘‘Which woman, signora?’’

  ‘‘There’s only one woman,’’ she retorted irritably. ‘‘Oh, not the Englishwoman. Maria, you fool.’’

  ‘‘But where can I find her?’’

  ‘‘Where? In the kitchen of course.’’

  ‘‘The kitchen?’’

  ‘‘Yes, the kitchen.’’

  As Enzo walked stiffly down the corridor, peering into empty room after empty room, Lady Newton shouted after him: ‘‘Don’t dawdle. Get a move on. Tell her she’s over half an hour late.’’

  Maisie, hearing the strident voice as she lay on her unmade bed and read a book in an effort to forget her hunger, muttered to herself, ‘‘The bitch is quite
mad,’’ and then got to her feet with a sigh.

  Perhaps, after all, lunch would be before two.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ENZO was fortunate and was paid his week’s wages; and when Colin asked him how he liked the work, he would nod his head vigorously and repeat, ‘‘Va bene, va bene.’’ But it was a strange household; and particularly strange now that Maisie Brandon had left to join her friends at the Palazzo d’Oro. Until her departure she had been, in an ineffective, sporadic way, the boy’s protector and guide, shielding him from the worst of Lady Newton’s eccentricities and giving him advice when he was baffled by her contradictory orders. ‘‘He’s a nice kid,’’ she used to drawl when she was asked about him, ‘‘and he has the patience of an angel.’’ While she was still at the villa, she used to like to sit in some room he was cleaning. Pretending to read, she would watch the muscles in his broad back and arms as he scrubbed and swept before her, and from time to time she would let fall some remark in her slovenly Italian or toss him a cigarette. Once she said casually, ‘‘ I want a puff of that,’’ and took the cigarette she had just given him from between his lips to put it to her own.

  ‘‘I’d like to visit the villa,’’ Colin repeatedly told her. ‘‘It sounds so extraordinary. Please mayn’t I?’’

  ‘‘Not an earthly, my dear. I’ve blotted my copy-book well and truly. She never wants me in the villa until I decide to go; then she does. I’d rather break out of Holloway any day than make that escape again. It was hell, sheer hell. Every door was slammed, but every door.’’

  Nevertheless Colin decided that he would go to the villa. ‘‘No, no,’’ Enzo said, echoing Maisie’s words. ‘‘È impossibile.’’ He was genuinely alarmed. ‘‘ I shall lose my job. You must not come. She would not forgive me.’’

  ‘‘But when she’s out,’’ Colin pursued.

  ‘‘She never goes out.’’

  ‘‘She must go out sometime.’’

  ‘‘Never.’’

  But this was not true. Lady Newton had for many years been a member of the Committee of a British relief organization, attending its meetings with unfailing zeal and regularity. It was not that she was interested in the work of the organization or even, as once, in the exercise of power for its own sake; but there were feuds of long standing between herself and most of the older members and whatever the cost in boredom she could not now bear to leave them the field. So whenever the Committee met, she was there, like a prizefighter who should long ago have quit the ring, to join issue with foes of twenty, twenty-five and even thirty years standing.

  Colin had heard other members of the English colony talk of these meetings to Karen and Max, and having discovered when the next took place, decided that on that afternoon he would pay Enzo a visit.

  At twelve, on the day he had chosen, the sky had begun to descend, and the hills had been united with it. On the terrace of the hotel, a sudden, convulsive shudder would pass through the flowering shrubs in their square green boxes, a few dead leaves would scrape on the stone-paved floor. Apparently without reason, a branch all at once snapped from its stem and hung, like a badly severed limb, from a ribbon of green skin. The brown surface of the Arno was pocked with an occasional cascade of raindrops and then congealed into its usual muddy tranquillity. A blind man was seated on the pavement opposite the hotel, his long, emaciated legs stuck so far out that the passers-by either had to climb over them or walk on the road. He was playing a harmonica, but in the heavy air the quavering notes seemed barely to have strength to rise from his lungs. He had turned up his coat collar in expectation of the storm, while those who might have given to him hurried regardless past.

  ‘‘At last it will rain,’’ Mrs. Bennett said with satisfaction, drawing a handkerchief across her face.

  ‘‘It was like this last Tuesday, and it didn’t,’’ Pamela warned. ‘‘But I hope it does. Then we can have electricity for the lift all through the day, and the taps may run faster.’’

  ‘‘You and Colin are real Americans,’’ her grandmother laughed. ‘‘You never think of anything but comfort. But I should like it to get cooler. Yes, that I should like.… Don’t lean too far over the balcony, Nicko,’’ she added sharply, ‘‘ Nicko!’’

  ‘‘Mummy’s friend has arrived,’’ the child announced, kicking his shoe against one of the stone columns.

  ‘‘Don’t do that. Nicko, don’t! You’ll ruin your shoe.’’

  ‘‘Don’t care.’’

  Mrs. Bennett sighed and turned away; at this moment she felt neither the desire nor the ability to deal with him, although she knew she should scold. She looked hopelessly at Pamela, who at once cried: ‘‘Stop it, Nicko,’’ and dragged her brother, now screaming loudly, away from the balcony. To console him she began to kiss his hair and cheeks until his tears stopped. ‘‘Draw for me,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Oh, Nicko, you know I can’t draw.’’

  ‘‘Draw for me, Granny,’’ he turned to Mrs. Bennett.

  ‘‘I’m too tired, dear—and too hot. Not now, another time.’’

  ‘‘Nobody will draw for me,’’ he said, again on the verge of tears. ‘‘I’ll have to draw for myself.’’

  ‘‘But I’ll watch,’’ Pamela encouraged. ‘‘Colin, come and watch Nicko draw.’’

  ‘‘I’m busy.’’ Colin was pasting stamps into his album, kneeling on a rug; by his side was a heap of ‘‘swops’’ which he had decided to give to Enzo.

  ‘‘Oh, Nicko, what a horrible drawing!’’ Pamela exclaimed. ‘‘ What’s it meant to be?’’

  ‘‘ Bomb.’’ Nicko said with satisfaction. ‘‘All killed. Arms—legs—blood.’’ He drew in a large smear with a red crayon. ‘‘More blood.’’

  ‘‘Why do you draw such things?’’ Pamela asked; but Nicko was too absorbed to answer. He continued to scribble with the red crayon, and then made some circles of blue. ‘‘Eyes,’’ he announced.

  Mrs. Bennett frowned, smoothing her hair away, from her forehead where perspiration had made it stick in a number of loose strands. She knew that the child was unhappy and she feared for his future; but she had no idea what to do for him, and the consequent frustration was poisoning her days. For she loved him more than anyone else in the world. Wearily she got up from the wicker-chair where she had been seated and went and knelt beside him, putting an arm round his shoulder.

  But he at once jostled her arm away. ‘‘I can’t draw like that,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Your collar’s all crumpled.’’ When she began to straighten it, he at once gave her a violent push from him. She toppled, tried to regain her balance, and fell on the rug. He gave an excited squeal of laughter.

  ‘‘Nicko! Naughty boy!’’ Pamela slapped him across the face.

  ‘‘You shouldn’t have done that, Pamela,’’ Mrs. Bennett said, clumsily hoisting herself from the rug. She was surprised to notice that Nicko had received the slap without a sound. He was staring down at his drawing, with its splashes of violent bloodshed, while his blue eyes filled with slow tears. ‘‘That was wrong of you, Pamela,’’ Mrs. Bennett added.

  ‘‘He must be taught a lesson,’’ Pamela said stubbornly. ‘‘He treats you as he pleases.’’

  ‘‘I don’t mind,’’ Mrs. Bennett said.

  ‘‘That’s not the point,’’ Colin put in, slamming his album shut. ‘‘You mustn’t spoil him, Granny.’’

  ‘‘I don’t think children are often spoiled by affection and generosity and forgiveness,’’ the old woman said, fingering the branch that the wind had snapped as if she were thinking of how she could mend it. ‘‘Those aren’t the things that spoil children.’’ The green ribbon of skin lay between the old, dry fingers. ‘‘I’m sure they’re not.’’

  Nicko had come across to her and suddenly he put out a hand and clutched the belt of her dress; he buried his face in her side. ‘‘Poor Nicko,’’ she said; and at the same moment she wrenched at the green skin so that it ripped from the tree. The branch fell to
the floor. ‘‘ Poor Nicko,’’ she repeated.

  ‘‘Rain,’’ said Maisie Brandon, clicking on her high-heels towards them. She was fanning one large-boned, emaciated cheek with a copy of Vogue. ‘‘ I tried to have a snooze, but I couldn’t. I just sweated and sweated and sweated.’’ She held out the box which she had been carrying under her arm: ‘‘A present for you, Nicko.’’

  ‘‘For me?’’

  ‘‘Yes, for you.’’

  ‘‘What is it?’’ he asked, taking it with some reluctance. He did not like Maisie and she knew that he did not like her.

  ‘‘Well, open it and see,’’ she replied, sinking into a wicker-chair and shuddering as she said: ‘‘Br-r-r! A moment ago I felt hot and now I feel cold. Fetch my fur, there’s a dear, Colin.’’

  ‘‘Colin!’’ his grandmother reprimanded, when he continued to read.

  ‘‘Yes, I’m going. Just let me finish this book.… Which fur do you want?’’ he asked Maisie.

  ‘‘Oh, the old fox,’’ she said.

  ‘‘No, you can’t!’’ he declared. ‘‘It would be all wrong with that dress. Mayn’t I bring the mink?’’

  Maisie laughed and shrugged her shoulders, obviously delighted. ‘‘As you please, dear,’’ she said. ‘‘ Well, do you like your present, Nicko?’’

  ‘‘I have a monkey already,’’ he replied.

  ‘‘Then this will be a companion for it,’’ Mrs. Bennett said.

  ‘‘Say thank you,’’ Pamela added.

  ‘‘I like it,’’ Nicko said, as if contradicting them. He clutched the animal to him, and then mumbled mechanically, ‘‘Thank you, Auntie Maisie.’’

  ‘‘Not Auntie Maisie—please!’’ Maisie protested. ‘‘For the hundredth time! I’ve told you. I don’t want to be an aunt”—she laughed—‘‘not even your aunt, Nicko.’’