Cara Massimina

by Tim Parks

  After six months or so, Dad found a new girlfriend, a skinny, giggly woman whose peals of laughter could be heard halfway down to Western Ave. Incredible that he’d expected Morris to be nice about it. Incredible he hadn’t seen this was just another psychological stick Morris could get back at him with. Dad was a novice, you almost began to pity him. Morris refused to sit at table with her, to watch TV. He heaved his books up to his room and studied.

  One gravitated, perhaps, towards what one could do best, the position of most power.

  Of course Dad, in his incredible pig ignorance, somehow related higher education to homosexuality, so that when Morris was the first student at Acton High ever to get to Cambridge, it was all confirmation to him. They more or less said good riddance to each other. And what riled Morris most of all when they threw him out two and a half years later, was that he had nowhere to go but back to Acton, and Dad’s told-you-sos.

  He had had, for the only time in his life, and for no more than ten minutes, ten milligrams of cocaine in his trouser pocket twisted into a piece of tin foil. He thought he would wait till he was sober before deciding whether to take it or not. If he hadn’t been drunk at one of their pathetic parties he would never have accepted the stuff. Never in a million years.

  The master’s point was that he was making an example. Morris was the kind of person they made examples of, not being connected to absolutely anybody who was in any way remotely anybody. As a result the whole thing passed quite obscenely unnoticed and no example was really made. The kind of irony Morris could do without. Even the students’ union, which Morris had repeatedly snubbed (he was interested in his studies, the first he was going to get, not in playing adolescent politics and sending money to Chile) seemed determined to let the matter drop without conflict.

  ‘I miscalculated on two fronts, Dad.’ Who cared if the thing was working or not. ‘If I’d made a big show of being working class from the beginning, instead of hiding it and spending all the grant on dressing well, then the union would have stepped in. If, on the other hand I’d dedicated myself to making useful friends, then somebody might have brought some influence to bear. But I got my head down from the start.’

  One of the things Morris most admired about himself, and that any eventual biographer would have to dwell on with some warmth, was how he had kept his morale up after what seemed must be a fatal blow, the destruction of everything he had worked towards. He was chucked out just two weeks before the finals and with firm offers for postgraduate places already under his belt. Which fell through at once, naturally enough. And yet in no sense had he lost his nerve. Serenity came partly from knowing you were in the right of course. And then he had been reading late Lawrence. There might be something to be gained from a reconciliation with Dad. He would get a job, work his way up. He still had his mind and a world to conquer. Youth and enthusiasm were on his side and university wasn’t all it was cracked up to be anyway. They might even have done him a favour (a postgraduate student hardly lived like a king). Winning is a state of mind, Morris told himself, and the May light was like honey all over the grit of Sunbeam Road as he dragged his suitcases back to Number 68.

  Why hadn’t they offered him a job? Why hadn’t they offered Morris a position? It was inconceivable. Thrown out, yes, but he had got a first in his Part 1. Then he never told them about the expulsion. His letters spoke eloquently of dissatisfaction with academia and eagerness to ply the trade he was applying for. And those letters were okay obviously, because they invariably won him an interview. Then his first interview usually won him a second; yet face to face at last with the man who actually held the gift in his hand, something always went wrong for Morris. But why? He presented himself well, he thought; he was polite but never obsequious, ambitious without even a suspicion of arrogance, respectful, faintly witty. What on earth was going wrong? Morris would watch himself in the big wardrobe mirror, searching for a fault. Nothing. Dark suit and tie, hair brushed to a blond treat across the intelligent forehead. Perfect.

  Still watching the reflection, he would explain himself to himself, his CV, modestly, warmly, recording it all on his dictating machine. Why did he want the job? Well, he felt he could offer certain qualities that . . . He looked himself in the eye and found strength of character perfectly controlled and restrained within the acceptable social conventions—what else did they want? His eyes were a shade too close together maybe, his nose a suspicion sharp, all right, but he could hardly help that, could he? And then the ‘real life,’ anti-glamour look was in these days; the men on the BBC seemed afflicted by boils, had nuisance hair, sticky out ears, and nobody seemed to mind. His accent still had a trace of Park Royal about it, did it? He would change it then. And he did. To no result. Or was it that his accent didn’t have enough of Park Royal about it? He sounded affected when he should have been earthy? Roots were in. Revert then. Morris tried everything, to no avail. He started with the BBC, the ITV (he sensed he was a media man at heart), the press, the publishers, and then worked his way down; big industry, medium industry, the civil service (nobody could say he hadn’t swallowed his pride), small industry, service industries. It was a full scale assault (a bonanza for the post office), but the last interview always did for him. The blue eyes, the frank open face, the blond hair; there was something threatening somewhere about Morris that the Captains of Industry were wise to. ‘Following our interview of the 14th, we regret . . .’ Always the same scrap of paper, electronically personalized on their processors. Then Gestetner offered him a minor position in their administrative department in Southgate (a mere London Transport marathon from Park Royal) from where, after three weeks of pushing papers between accounts, publicity and production, Morris retired, utterly dissatisfied.

  ‘Scrounger,’ was his father’s sour comment on finding his son back on the dole. ‘No sticking power,’ he said, between fried eggs. ‘No gumption.’ And try as he might, Morris simply couldn’t reconcile himself to his father’s reactionary, working-class virility. (Lawrence had rediscovered Dad from a distance of course.) The ground-floor council flat they lived in seemed full to bursting with the man, his beer mugs and boiled-egg sandwiches, string vests stale with sweat, abandoned cups of cocoa and a booming voice locked into constant argument with the television, Nationwide and World of Sport—Ron Greenwood had chosen the wrong team again. No, it was impossible for Morris to escape his father, the fearful smells and noises, and impossible in that claustrophobic crushing space to hope for any kind of romantic reconciliation.

  So on a fine night a year after his expulsion, some weeks after the Gestetner episode and following a desultory second interview with the Milk Marketing Board (what was life for?), Morris left his Sunbeam Road home, and some four hours later his country, on a ‘Magic Bus’ that he hoped might live up to its name. Morris was to hear some months after this that the Milk Marketing Board had awarded him a key position in their publicity department. But by that time his boats were carbonized mentally, morally, and what really counted, practically—he had no money to get home.

  ‘When did your family come to Verona?’

  Friday afternoon, last lesson. The not-so-merry month of May. Two years on.

  ‘My family ees in Verona these many hundreds of the centuries.’

  Oh God.

  ‘Ask me.’

  Blank.

  ‘Ask me why I came to Verona.’

  ‘Why did you came to Verona?’

  ‘Come.’

  ‘Ah si . . . did you come.’

  ‘It was the furthest place I could afford a ticket to.’

  Incomprehension.

  ‘Money. Finished. Here. I must stop. Find job.’

  Puzzlement. Fleeting smile of the young Gregorio amongst family frescoes. To his left was the little bronze dryad on her pedestal that Morris had winked at so often throughout the interminable boredom of his lessons with the boy—and never a wink back. A nice statue though, breasts pressed almost flat with the exuberant stretch of the bo
dy upwards, holding a branch of some kind. Worth money.

  ‘You are the ’eepy then?’ Gregorio’s face was a smiling Latin blank, polished hair oiled back from the roots, dark eyes uselessly alive. ‘You are the Jack Kerouac?’

  ‘God forbid!’

  ‘Cosa? I would like to be the ’eepy too.’

  By which he meant he would like to move into a state of permanent holiday, Morris thought. ‘Maybe I’ll take you with me some time,’ he said. ‘Ti porto con me.’

  Gregorio was surprisingly quite excited. ‘Would be very nice. If my parents would be agreed.’ He paused and switched to Italian, grinning white teeth. ‘They would think it was educational.’

  Morris considered those bright, dark eyes for a moment from his own, ice-clear and Anglo-Saxon blue.

  ‘Okay, time’s up.’ The lesson was just finishing when the telephone rang. Gregorio, all energy as ever now his trials were ended, rushed to grab the thing.

  ‘Be there in a minute!’ He had to dash over to his grandparents in the next block, from where the family was setting off to Cortina for the weekend. So nobody, Morris thought, with a lucidity quite fatally cool, would be back in the house again till Monday. And already he had decided. He was going to steal something.

  ‘I’ll show myself out,’ he shouted to Gregorio, who was hurrying up to his room now for his skiing outfit.

  ‘Bene, arrivederci a martedi.’

  ‘Arrivederci.’

  With one calm look about the room and particularly at the windows, Morris lifted the little bronze statue from its pedestal and jammed the thing to the very bottom of his document case, nearly splitting the leather seams. The bulge was obscenely obvious. Should he unlatch the window to give an explanation of the crime? Morris started in that direction, but Gregorio’s quick feet were already padding down the stairs. Morris turned sharply to the door, then changed his mind and stopped still. Was there time to put the thing back before the boy appeared? Was there? No.

  ‘Look, do you need any help down the stairs with your bags?’

  Gregorio had appeared at the bottom of spiral steps, laden with gear. The absence of the statuette from its little pedestal seemed horribly, glaringly obvious. And likewise the huge bulge in his document case. What a fool! Morris deliberately looked at the pedestal, inviting the worst. But Gregorio was already gliding down the snowy slopes above Cortina with his ‘friend,’ twisting and turning through gulleys, slithering round beginners. And perhaps he had never really noticed the statuette anyway. Morris felt prickled all over with sweat and excitement. His buttocks were tight together in his trousers.

  ‘Here, let me take the poles at least.’

  ‘Bene, grazie.’

  They were out of the apartment on the stone stairs that led down to the courtyard. Morris watched Gregorio turn the key over two, three times in the lock, then use another tiny key which must be to activate the alarm. A small green light glowed out beside the door. Then they went down to where the fountain played over the faun’s flanks in the twilight and out into Via Emilei. Gregorio’s father had the Mercedes packed up and ready at the corner of Via Fama.

  ‘Buona sera, Signore, Signora.’

  ‘Buona sera, Morees! Come sta? Tutto bene, il lavoro?’

  ‘Grazie, grazie,’ Gregorio was saying as Morris laid the poles alongside others on the roof-rack.

  ‘You must come with us one time,’ the signora said and smiled indulgently at their boy’s teacher. Her face, under a thatch of peroxide blonde, was absurdly young, all powders and creams most probably, Morris thought, and glancing down at his case he caught a faint, tell-tale gleam of bronze from the bottom. Anybody could see it.

  ‘I don’t ski, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Gregorio will teach you.’

  ‘Si, si,’ the boy agreed. He was taller than Morris and smiled down with long teeth.

  ‘Gregorio likes you very much,’ the father said, as if this was some kind of terrific compliment. ‘We’d like you to come.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to that very much,’ Morris said.

  They would never invite him in a million years.

  5

  Late the following evening, Morris walked quickly down Via Portone Borsari, Via Fama, Via Emilei, and found the great oaken doors of the palazzo which Gregorio’s family owned and in part of which they lived. It was near midnight. He hit a bell at random. Famiglia Zane.

  After a few moments the intercom crackled. ‘Chi è?’ The distortions of the thing would cover any voice characteristics.

  ‘Sono Gregorio, Signora. I can’t find my outside doorkey. I hope I didn’t wake you.’

  ‘Va bene,’ the woman was clearly annoyed, but after just a second the gate buzzed open and Morris passed through. Gregorio was, after all, son of the padrone.

  He could go upstairs to the apartment door, but there was nothing to be gained there with that alarm. Instead he went through the porch into the tiny courtyard where the fauns postured in the middle of a fountain that had now been turned off. Morris sat on the edge of the great stone bowl. Midnight. The various clocks of the city gonged and chimed. The night was pale and the dark air of the courtyard had a spongy, damp taste. He considered the internal walls around him, smothered with vines and wistaria up all four storeys, the plants parting only for the windows, two of which were yellow with light. Nothing for it but to wait.

  He sat on the stone bowl, shifting from one buttock to the other against the cold. Half an hour, an hour; but he wasn’t bored. It had occurred to Morris that in all his long and tedious education and then his meagre round of lessons, not to mention the paperchase his year of unemployment had been, this was the very first time he had ever dealt shrewdly with the world of things and people for definite gain—bar the document case of course, and that had been too easy. This was definitely more exciting.

  Perhaps it was mostly a question of passing one’s time in the end. Without feeling an utter fool. He had thought of that before. And if they wouldn’t let you arrive at money honestly and honourably, nor marry it, perhaps it wouldn’t be so terribly out of order, or even difficult, to steal it. Perhaps it was just a matter of keeping your eyes peeled, an extension of the sort of Morris-against-the-world feeling he had always sensed at school.

  And then it wasn’t even a question of money really, but of style. Was he to go on living for years and years, counting each teaching minute as so many lire, wrapping himself in blankets wintertime, doomed to public transport, envy—while these people lived, due to accidents of birth, with the grace of emperors? What advice, what alternative counsel did the world offer him? How was time to be passed, life to be spent? The popular wisdom (find a job, chin up, work hard, there are always the weekends) offered only oblivion.

  If they gave you nothing to do, at least you could give them something to think about.

  At one fifteen the last light went off and the courtyard settled in a deeper dark. Morris gave it fifteen more minutes. It might have been wise to wait longer but he was getting cold now and eager to have done. Enough. Standing up, his bottom stiff and numb, his lips dry, bowels weak, he felt the same kind of nervous flush he had felt as a young student before an exam. Excitement and fear. The next few minutes deciding everything. And Morris had always thrived in that kind of competitive situation.

  If only life really were decided by exams!

  He went and stood under a vine whose trunk climbed to the second floor near the sitting room window of the Ferronis. He trampled the little patch of open earth where the thing sprouted and then shinned up a few feet, breaking off leaves and branches. A fine mess. He dropped down and considered the windows. The hole would need to be big enough for an arm to go through to give the impression someone had reached in and opened the thing from inside.

  He took the largest of the stones from his pocket and aimed carefully. In the narrow courtyard his throw would have to be steep, near vertical. He heaved up the stone and missed. The thing struck the wall a yard or so to the r
ight and clattered down through a sea of vine leaves. The noise was appalling, a fearfully loud rustling with sharp echoing cracks as the stone bounced on branches and finally struck the flagstones of the courtyard like a gunshot. Morris dashed through the arch to the outer door and had it half open before he paused to listen. Despite the coolness he suddenly found himself bathed in sweat. Why on earth had he got involved in this crazy business for the sake of that stupid little statue? God! But there must be some sign of a break-in or he was finished. It wouldn’t take them ten minutes to work out who had done it.

  After a few moments he crept back into the courtyard to discover that no lights were on. Nobody had woken it seemed. Amazing. He found his stone behind the fountain, took up exactly the same position as before and this time threw with a slight bias to the left. Dead on. The window must have been made of the cheapest glass because it flew into fragments which fell in a shower through the vines. But before they could hit the ground, Morris was already out on the street. He thrust his hands in his pockets, pursed his lips to whistle and, given that the last bus was long gone, set out briskly on the long walk home. What he whistled was, ‘When the Saints.’

  Morris had the statue boldly placed on his coffee table beside the photo of his mother and glanced up at it from time to time above the pages of his book. He would have to wait till Monday’s or Tuesday’s papers to hear how much it was worth. But it was not urgent. In fact, he wasn’t sure he really cared, or whether he would make any attempt to sell the little lady whatever she would fetch. It was nice just to have her there, a smooth, bronze, upward lift of form; knees, thighs, breasts, arms and tilted face, all swinging from right to left and exuberantly upwards. He would keep the thing, damn it, unless he was desperate. Perhaps he would even buy a pedestal.