by Tim Parks
'If I could make it, I’d love to see Sardinia. It depends on work though, you know. I've had a couple of offers for interpreting at conferences.’
‘Suit yourself, but the swimming’s excellent there. Plus there’s always plenty of company, not to mention a boat or two to play with.’
What could be better? And having managed not to jump at it right from the very start, Morris was just going to accept quite definitely, and rather prematurely really, because the lad could easily go and cancel on him the next day and then he would look a complete fool - just about to accept, when all at once there was a voice calling out his name across the square. Morris’s name.
“Morrees! Eccoti qua! Che meraviglioso!' Oh Morri, I have to speak to you. ‘ The girl was in tears, you couldn’t say whether of joy or pain. 'I saw your letter, Morrees!’
Morris looked at her. Massimina was in a complete mess. Red in the freckled face, make-up all over the place, hair tousled, body apparently quite shapeless in a running outfit of all things. And out of breath to boot - nostrils flaring and eyes puffy. Rather horrible.
Just when he might have settled things with Gregorio too! Morris didn’t stand up.
‘Morrees, thank God I found you, thank God, if you knew, if you only knew what…’ She stopped, unable to go on and burst into tears. Gregorio stood, embarrassed, but curious too, eyes flickering from the girl to Morris. His long delicate fingers moved inside his shirt for his wallet.
‘No, look. I’ll pick up the bill,’ Morris told him quickly. ‘And I’ll give you a call as soon as possible about Sardinia, okay?’
Gregorio turned to where Massimina stood there panting, and was obviously waiting to be introduced, but Morris didn’t oblige. Introduce friends and they end up going off on their own together. To talk about you behind your back.
‘Are you sure it’s okay?’ Gregorio asked. 'Yes, I’ll get it,’ and he winked at the boy with just the right kind of ambiguity.
‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ Gregorio grinned, nodding at the weeping girl, and he had obviously decided to find the situation amusing. His slim figure swayed off across the square in white bermudas and neon-blue T-shirt.
Massimina sat down and had found a handkerchief. Her tracksuit was brilliant red with white flashes down the arms. Her black hair, fallen forward, stretched down as far as the table. Sympathy was in order. (This was the girl he’d asked to marry him.) Morris put out a hand and took the girl’s wrist gently.
'Tell me about it. Come on. Cheer up now, everybody is looking.’ When the waiter passed he ordered two martinis, which would just about break him.
He looked over Massimina’s body, but there was no sign of a bag or purse.
‘Come on now, tell me.’
So bit by bit, sniffling her martini and pushing the back of now one wrist, now the other, into her red eyes, she told. Everything had gone wrong at home, just everything and again everything. Yes? Morris tapped his feet on the marble flagstones under the table. The martini was making him feel extremely comfortable and rather distant, as if he were at the other end of the square.
Grandma was ill, she said, that was the first thing, dying most probably with her angina, and all the others were being so horrid about it saying it was probably better if she went now, if she was going to be so demanding and helpless all the time. Then she, Massimina, had failed all her end-of-term exams, everything, completely, which meant she would have to study all summer to retake them in September, and it just wasn’t fair, it wasn’t, nor even sensible, because there was no point in her studying, because she just wasn’t that sort.
‘No,’ Morris said.
Anyway, then she had discovered his letter, which Mamma must have been hiding from her for days, and so now she knew he loved her and she was more sure than anything in the world that she loved him and her mother was just being horrible saying the things she did about him. Paola had sent her running to get Grandma’s pills in the middle of the night from Mamma’s handbag and she’d found the letter by accident. So after lunch she’d put on her tracksuit and said she was just going for a run and then she’d run all the way into town to find him, because she wasn’t going home any more.
Morris watched the coloured dresses shifting in the steadily slanting light across the square. If the mother didn’t want Massimina to see the letter, why hadn’t she simply destroyed it? A far more sensible line.
‘So, what are you going to do?’
'I'm not going back, that’s all. Not to spend all summer studying for exams, and with Mamma not allowing me to see anybody. I wasn’t made to do exams.’
In about five minutes she would change her mind, Morris thought. After all, she had never even slept in a different bed from her mother. He waited, watching as she dabbed the tears away from her round, faintly freckled face. The prettiness of the camellia coloured skin was coming back now. Extraordinarily smooth skin when you compared it, for example, with Gregorio’s. Or any boy’s over fifteen. And that was something Morris always looked for in girls and that never failed to fascinate him when he found it. Simply as an extraordinary fact, that skin could be so smooth, life seem so fresh.
‘What were you made for then?’ he asked.
Fair question. Not at all cynical.
She looked into his eyes and her bottom lip puckered out into a childish dimpled smile.
“Maybe for you, Morrees.’
After Morris’s last lesson, Massimina was waiting at the bus stop as she had promised. Hoist with his own petard, was the way he saw it. There was no point in courting the girl outside her family’s approval. He had no taste for it at all. And particularly he had no desire to start some kind of awful affair that could only end in disaster. He had written that letter to get himself into her family, not to get her out of it. The difference was neither academic nor subtle.
‘I should really take you straight home.’ That should win some approval. ‘Come on, let’s find a taxi.’
‘No, Morri,’ and quite impetuously she threw her arms around him.'I'm not going back.’
At which precise moment, Stan wobbled past. Stopping his bike under a lamp across the street, his face was a wide bearded grin.
‘Hey man, you made up your mind about Turkey yet? We’re off in a week now.’
Massimina pulled away.
'You can always bring your friend,’ Stan laughed. ‘Drop in and tell us as soon as you can.’ A bus swept between them and Stan disappeared.
7
It was seeing her together with the money, so much money, that brought the idea into his head. He had been explaining, quite reasonably, in the plain light of another day, that simply from the financial point of view she couldn’t possibly stay, when she unzipped the red tracksuit top just three or four inches and, reaching inside, produced after a few seconds of fiddling a small wad of notes that must have been hidden in her bra.
‘I took out all my life savings yesterday. I've got loads of money, enough for a couple of months anyway. And after that they won’t be able to do anything about it anyway, will they? I mean, in cases like that they have to let you marry because of thinking you’ve been to bed together.’
Morris’s mouth, which had been open wide to speak, snapped shut.
‘And anyway, I’m eighteen in August.’
Well, they definitely had not been to bed together. In fact the evening had passed rather well. Massimina had made up a cold salad, laid and cleared the table and then taken a bath, re-appearing afterwards in the tracksuit, but without, Morris noticed, a shade unnerved, her bra. Her breasts were larger and heavier than he had imagined, and indeed than anybody would have imagined, given her slim body. He stayed sitting at the kitchen table where she was safely opposite and for conversation, to fill the time, he simply asked her questions, as he had always done at the bar after lessons waiting for the bus, and she chattered happily in reply: Bobo did this and that, he had got off his military service by getting a doctor friend of his father’s to give him a certifi
cate which said he had an ulcer. Mamma had had an accident which made her deaf in one ear, Antoneila was studying law, Paola had a crush on a married man and wanted to go away for a year to get over it but Mamma …
It really wasn’t too difficult at all, Morris thought. As long as the absence of that bra wasn’t supposed to be a signal for something or other. At eleven, he said quite abruptly that he had to be going to Vicenza next morning. In fact, he’d have to be making a very early start. Very.
Better get to sleep now then, she said. She had found his brush and was brushing out her long black hair, which under the spotlamps had strange reddish lights in it. Should she, she asked, sleep on the sofa, or would he? He would, Morris said, rather too quickly, too gallantly.
Where would you find a nice girl like that in England? he asked his stolen statue, undressing. All he could remember from university parties were vamps and sluts who ignored you when you couldn’t dance and then rediscovered you later when you were the only one free or sober and tried to drag you back to their rooms as if you were so much hot meat. Obviously there was something to be said for the Catholic provinces after all. He had chosen well.
Though not so well with the sofa perhaps. For eight hours he had half slept, huddled into a question mark, waking occasionally to the dog’s barking, his teeth clenched, tongue sore.
Now, with the first morning light streaming in like a great boiling white girder against the red material of that sofa, Morris rotated his head to chase out the cricks from his neck.
‘How much is there?’ he asked involuntarily, knowing he shouldn’t. But the idea was already there. And ideas, like weapons, can’t be uninvented. (Speaking of weapons, Morris had a nasty habit, an illness he sometimes thought, of seeing them everywhere. He could hardly butter his toast of a morning without respectfully fingering the handle of the knife, inescapably aware of its terrible potential.)
‘Two million. That’s all I had in my account. But if we live cheaply we can last a while I think, untill one of us gets a job or something.‘ She stopped. ‘Don’t you have to go to Vicenza today though?’
‘Look Mimi' - it was the first time he had used the diminutive form of her name, ‘it’s only going to take them about one hour to call all your friends and work out you must be with me, right? Then about another hour to contact my school and get my address and they’ll be over here determined to take you away.’
She was silent.
‘So if you want to stay with me, we'll have to go on a trip, otherwise they’ll force you home. They could even arrive any minute.’
‘Yes,’ she said dubiously. ‘The only thing is, though, I should stay in Verona in case Grandma gets any worse. They had to take her to the hospital yesterday.’
He swallowed the coffee she had made for him and looked at her, making sure that that new little smile didn’t play about the edge of his lips.
'It’s one or the other,’ he said tenderly. ‘Home or the trip. But we can’t stay here. Grandma or no Grandma.’
If she says home, he thought, then fine, well and good. But if she goes, for the trip … Morris suddenly felt his whole body swimming and tingling with blood, his trousers tight round the crotch.
‘You can always,’ he said, ‘phone as soon as we’re away and then come back if she gets really bad.’
‘Yes,’ and she smiled brightly. ‘Yes.’ She leaned down from where she was standing by the table with the sculpture and photograph of his mother, and ruffled his blond hair with her fingers. ‘Let’s go on a trip then, Morri. Let’s! That would be marvellous,’ and she bent down to kiss his mouth.
‘Right.’ Morris was already standing up. Right right right right!
‘But just let me phone home first. So they’ll know I’m all right. It’s a bit mean really, making them worry any more.’
No, if they knew she was with him from the start then there would be no point in it at all. Morris wasn’t sure yet whether he had quite made up his mind, but he was determined to keep such a very exciting idea within the realms of possibility. He put his arms on her shoulders and moved them inwards - gestures you saw on television - to find he was caressing a neck softer than any simile could tell. But he didn’t let that confuse him. (It was, after all, the waste that was a wonder to him with human beauty. So much loveliness for nothing.)
‘Let me phone,’ he said. I can ask about Grandma. If they talk to you they'll be totally intimidating. You know what your mother’s like. Shell have you back and studying all summer in no time.’ He suddenly felt very affectionate.
She hesitated. ‘Okay.’
They went into the hallway and stood over the telephone.
‘Trenta-sei, Sessanta-Sei, novanta-due.’
‘Giusto.’ Morris licked his lips. This wasn’t the decision itself. He could simply enjoy it for what it was, a clever practical joke. The point of no return was miles away. In Vicenza? ‘Trenta-sei, sessanta-sei, novanta-due.’ He dialled the numbers very swiftly until, on the nine, he lifted his finger away almost an inch before the dialling stop. Massimina was watching his face with a worried smile and noticed nothing. There was a curious mixture of flirtiness and fear about her, timidity and courage. Very female. Not unlike Mother when she dressed up for darts club lunches but was worried Dad would get drunk. That way they had of enjoying and suffering together. Scrubbers and martyrs both. Morris was suddenly feeling quite sure he could handle this.
Then he was surprised to hear that a phone had begun to ring somewhere. He had expected simply the no-connect signal. Damn. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.
‘Pronto?’ A stranger’s voice, thank God.
‘Pronto, Signora Trevisan?’
‘Sorry, who? There’s no Trevisan here.’
Morris waited for the other to hang up, but she didn’t. Massimina looked at him, raising a thick eyebrow. He’d have to make her pluck that if they were going to be in each other’s company for much longer. He covered the mouthpiece.
It was Paola. She’s just gone to get your mother -pronto, Signora Trevisan?’
'I'm afraid there’s no Trevisan living here, you’ve got a wrong number.’
Why in God’s name didn’t she hang up then? Damn.
‘Sono Morris Duckworth.’
This number is three-six, six-six, seven-two. What number were you after?’
‘It’s about Massimina, Signora Trevisan.’ Ninety-nine cases out of a hundred people were rude and hung up when there was a wrong number - and this woman had to try and be helpful!
‘Hello, can you hear me? Hello.’
'I just wanted to tell you that Massimina is here, Signora.’
And finally the line went dead. Morris relaxed. He smiled at Massimina who was biting the cuff of her tracksuit.
‘No, Signora, I had no part whatsoever in encouraging your daughter and I certainly haven’t made any attempt to take advantage of her. Rather the opposite. I’ve been telling her she should go home. But she insists she wants to stay here. Not only because she’s in love with me, Signora, but because she finds the way you run her life totally unacceptable and dictatorial.’ This was perfect. Morris almost wished for a moment that Signora Trevisan really was at the other end. But it was too late now. He left a long pause for an angry reply.
‘No, I don’t intend to discuss anything of the kind with you, Signora. Nor does your daughter. I merely phoned to inform you that you needn’t worry, and also because Massimina would like to know how her grandmother is.’
He paused again, but this time Massimina grabbed his arm to take the phone off him. The receiver came away from his ear for a moment so that he was sure she must have heard the whine of the empty line. ‘No!' he pressed the thing back to his ear and shook his head firmly, frowning.
'Thank you, Signora, I’m very glad to hear it. And now I’ll … no, Signora, I told you I haven’t, we haven’t …’
He hung up.
‘No point in trying to speak to her. She was shouting the most awful things.
’ He smiled sadly. ‘Better move quick now, or she'll be over here,’
‘And Grandma?’
‘She’s fine. They’re bringing her back home this afternoon and they reckon shell be on her feet in a week or so.’
In the train Morris watched Massimina while she watched out of the window. Once you got to know it, her face certainly had its character; oval and freckled with wide, liquid deep brown eyes and an expression that generally settled into a little practical frown, showing the light down of hairs on her puckered upper lip. But it was a practicality born of sweeping the stairs and dusting the furniture, not a discerning quality, certainly not a mark of intelligence. It was not that she could represent in any sense for Morris either a mind he wished to court or a beauty he would be for ever pleased to contemplate; yet if she bothered him as little as she had so far, stayed quiet and sensible and more or less content, then it would be enough.
Watching out of the window at the countryside flung by in bits and pieces, Morris was now feeling perfectly calm. He wouldn’t make the fateful decision for a couple of days anyway, untill he’d seen how things were panning out. So for the moment he could just relax and enjoy. In comparison, the Vicenza thing was beginning to seem rather a minor, silly, far-fetched affair (say it was all a joke if there was any trouble - nobody surely could take it seriously - get off with a warning). Who knows though, he might have another five million lire before the afternoon was out. Or had he asked for six? One should keep copies of that kind of thing.
‘Morrees!’
‘Si, cara.’
‘What a strange look you had on your face.’
‘Really? I was just thinking.’
‘What about? Tell me.’
There were two others in the compartment, a nun and an ageing peasant and the nun smiled indulgently. Massimina reached across the space between the seats and took his hand.
