A Favourite of the Gods and a Compass Error

by Sybille Bedford

  “What is blood?” said Anna. “I suppose it turns American at some point the way yours must have turned blue. All I meant was that she’s part American through me.”

  “I’m not Scotch English,” said Constanza.

  “Tu sei Romana,” said the prince.

  Constanza turned to him. “And how not! What next?” But Anna had the last word here. She looked at this alien child, this girl, who stood before her, eyes flashing, talking with her hands. “There is a good deal of your grandfather in you,” she said.

  •

  No Mrs. Waddington or her kind turned up to disturb their peace. If for Anna the years were smooth, they were also much the same, one round like the other.

  When she first arrived she had breathed some of her vigour into the local charities; she had done what she could, gone as far as she might without becoming strident. It was not a large field. There is a point up to which graceful femininity, determined, may gallop; beyond it, the femininity becomes a total liability. Anna, at least outside her family life, did not attempt to crash barriers. It might not have displeased her to have been able to see herself as the éminence rose behind some political movement or figure; the opportunity did not come her way. The prince and his friends, apart from complaining about the times, remained wholly aloof from public affairs. Her own cosmopolitan Rome was in some senses a backwater; she could hear the larger issues talked of by her eminent men; at the embassies she had gossip, the echoes of intrigue, she might get a glimpse of workings, but she never saw action, never tasted the illusion even of having her hand at some wheel, and she came to realize that in Rhode Island, in her first youth, hearing her father and uncles return at night, she had been nearer a helm.

  She turned her mind to the family land, to some model reform that might one day point the way in rural Italy. The prince gave his nonchalant consent and said how would she find the money? Obstacles appeared. She made a plan for the figs to be dried in a more scientific way, packed in pretty boxes and shipped to foreign countries. She was told that the crop had always been sold to a man at Gubbio who very likely did export it in the end. Precisely, she said, they must cut out the middle-men. She got as far as having a young protégé design a label which showed their house but not their name; then the whole scheme petered out. The principessa turned to cows, cows to replace the goats. The prince told her there was no pasture. She had no first-hand knowledge of such things, and agriculture did not really interest her. She decided to do something for the peasants. She loved the people. When she said people, she saw salesgirls, dressmakers, waiters, clerks, her servants. Italian servants had been one of the joyful discoveries of her new life; she charmed and spoilt them and they gave her their sincerest flattery. Now she proposed to install up-to-date coal-ranges in the contadini kitchens. Everybody raised their hands to heaven and talked about the price of coal in the peninsula. Anna, relieved perhaps, returned to Rome.

  •

  The old principessa had survived her daughter-in-law’s return for nearly seven years. Now she died. The family was united in gentle and copious grief. Constanza ceased her roamings and joined the circle in which they all sat together, hugging each other, shedding open tears. When life claimed them again, it was Anna who appeared to remain the most bereft; she was restless, nothing pleased her, she seemed to find it difficult to take up things. She began to find fault with Constanza (then in her first flush of atheism), but at crucial moments Constanza simply was not there. She tried to provoke the prince, drive him into some kind of duel or storm, telling him he was idle, that his life was useless, that he lacked convictions. The prince, still a very sad man himself, became more transparent or withdrew a little further—it was never possible to say which—and would not let himself be provoked. “Anna, poor woman, is missing mammina,” he told his sisters. He found it natural.

  In her time the old principessa had been passionately devoted to her husband, whom she seldom saw but who was handsome and kind; her old age had been animated by her disinterested romantic attachment to Anna. While she was able to move she had never relinquished her habit of following Anna about the palazzo with a fragile nimbleness; whenever Anna returned from a party or a journey, there had been the old lady, benignly waiting, giving welcome. She hardly went out herself, but had wanted to hear every detail, not about the world, but Anna in the world; there was nothing Anna did that was not of exciting interest to her, nothing Anna had to tell that she did not long to hear; she admired everything. The emotion which she poured upon her idol was of a quality other than that which Anna received from her husband and her daughter, self-contained creatures whose affection was an almost indiscriminate overflow of their own natures.

  “She was like a mother to me,” Anna told her maid, “the only mother I knew.”

  Mena who had been watching them for on to fourteen years, said nothing.

  4

  IT WAS in the autumn following the old principessa’s death that Anna became involved in the rather mysterious episode that is said to have affected her so much. What exactly happened nobody does know as Anna never told the whole truth to anyone.

  Among Anna’s admirers there was one Sir Charles, a widower, well-off, who had been a soldier and in the diplomatic service and was now something of a dilettante. He was a tall, blue-eyed man, always perfectly turned out. Constanza later said of him that even in those days, when people did not exactly go about in flannel trousers, he was a wonder to behold. She and her young cronies used to call him The Portrait of a Gentleman. He did water-colours, was a bibliophile and had a flat in the Theatre of Marcello. He and Anna went to every symphony concert together, saying how much they preferred these to the opera.

  He and Anna had been going everywhere for years. At home she was teased about Sir Charles. Anna has become acclimatized, the prince would say, she has taken a cicisbeo, meno male.

  But even Roman gossip had ceased to doubt Anna’s virtue. Nobody bothered any longer to call her deep. They had marvelled long enough at her capacity for resistance, her capacity rather for ignoring that there was anything to resist; now it had become a fact of local life.

  What was not known was that Anna and Sir Charles moved in an exquisite cloud of renunciation. Sir Charles had not attempted to conquer. One day across the tea-table he had declared his hopeless passion, making it quite clear that for people such as they it could be nothing else but that. Anna found it beautiful. Sir Charles told her that she was the love of his life; she was able to tell him that if only the fates had willed it otherwise. . . . This, they told each other, was all they would ever have, the knowledge of each other’s feelings. For a time they were very happy. They continued to address each other as Sir Charles and Principessa even in private and they were proud of this. Anna became convinced that she had missed her life, that in her youth and ignorance she had made a grave mistake, at last and too late she knew the man she should have married. This, then, was her secret, the key to herself. She bore it nobly. It gave extra point to her whole situation, focussed discontents that might have stirred, and she was able to pursue the serene bustle of her existence with an added glow.

  Liaisons such as these, if more long-lived than consummated love, do not last for ever. The magic either becomes too potent or it fades. In Anna’s case, Sir Charles in due course became a fixture, a shadow. Then he provided a new stimulus by saying that he must go away.

  “Leave our beloved Italy——?”

  Sir Charles told her that it had become too much, it would be best for him if he did not see her again, Sorceress Principessa, at least not for some years.

  It was the spring after her mother-in-law had died. Anna was getting on for thirty-five. She always told her age; but she also thought about it.

  He would go to the East, he said, a good place for a man with a broken heart.

  “But you have my heart,” said Anna.

  He never saw her, he complained, at least only among strangers, in public places. . . . “This is not a pub
lic place.” Anna smiled. They were sitting once more at his tea-table—laid with collector’s china, in the flat in the Teatro di Marcello, one of the most coveted flats in Rome.

  For an hour! he said. Less as a matter of fact, said Anna, she would have to go, she had to change early.

  “Can’t you see?” he said.

  Presently his man-servant came in to remove some things. Anna did not become aware of an intrusion.

  “Shall I never have you to myself, then?” he asked.

  •

  All summer they sparred. At last she agreed to meet him somewhere. I promised to give him two days, she put it later on.

  They arranged to meet at an hotel in the Dolomites in October. She would be on her way to stay with a relative in Vienna who had been Godmother to Constanza. She was to break the journey at Cortina d’Ampezzo for forty-eight hours; Sir Charles would be already there. It would be the last of the season, the hotel still open, but empty of people they knew. Whatever Anna envisaged when she agreed to this plan, she did know that it had to remain clandestine and involve at least a minimum of subterfuge and management. Whatever the facts, in the society in which she lived, the appearances for a married woman such as she were sacrosanct. Did Anna know the whole of the risk she ran? Did she, possibly, court it? More likely she was ignorant of the extent of it, for whatever the look of things she expected the world to have the faith in her that she had in herself. Anna’s innocence may have been monstrous; it was genuine.

  •

  In the event she never got to Vienna. She came home less than two days after she had left, in a hired cab from the station. No-one saw her return. Her maid, Mena, who one must realize had been with her all the time, helped her upstairs, to her bed, shuttered the room.

  Mena was a tiny, wiry woman with a screwed-up face, she might have been any age; actually her age was that of Anna. She went off to assure her mistress’s peace.

  “What’s the matter?” said the prince.

  “It is nothing,” said Mena, “the Signora Principessa has had a kind of fright.”

  “On the train, poverina?”

  “More at the hotel, Eccellenza. It was nothing. But it has given her a headache, she had better be left quiet for a few days.”

  “A fright at the hotel? Perhaps some fellow in his cups tried to rape her!” The prince found this a beautifully fantastic joke and enlarged on it. “Fellow must have been pretty tipsy. . . . Did he kick her door down?”

  Mena, who was really devoted to Anna, laughed duly.

  But the prince must have come very near the truth.

  •

  Anna lay on her bed, her eyes wide open.

  Mena came in with a cup; hovered; Anna did not respond. “I told them downstairs it was migraine.”

  Anna moved her lips: “Men are . . . vile.”

  “Men are men, Signora Principessa.”

  “That is dreadful,” said Anna.

  •

  When Anna moved once more amongst them, they found that she was no longer at all easy to get on with.

  There lived in Rome at that time a Protestant lady of vast rectitude who disliked most things that went on in Italy, her name was Mrs. Throgmore-Wylie. With this woman, who was English, rich, a widow, a good deal older and quite plain, Anna now closely allied herself, in fact made her a confidante. As neither of them was given to call a spade a spade, it is not easy to make out what was divulged. They worked themselves up to a big scene during which Anna gave a profusion of hints which Mrs. Throgmore-Wylie spread, thinned and considerably darkened, in other carefully managed tête-à-têtes. Those hints did not refer to Anna’s recent escapade but to her past life with the prince. Apparently Anna had another secret. Perhaps she did not find it possible to live without one.

  •

  Sir Charles did not return to Rome. His man and some very expert packers came to shut the establishment in the Teatro di Marcello. He did not go to the East but to Paris where he found and furnished for himself a flat on the Île Saint-Louis.

  •

  A year, a full year later, Anna showed once more acute signs of distress. In turn she remained locked upstairs or dragged herself about. She talked about taking her own life. She refused to see her doctor; then went to see one furtively. She took against the prince and more than anyone she shunned her friend, Mrs. Throgmore-Wylie. When at length the cause of all this could not longer be concealed, the family were very much relieved.

  “It takes some of them that way,” said the prince; “Giulia’s husband tells me they had quite a time over her fourth.”

  “It wasn’t like this when Anna was expecting Constanza,” said Maria.

  “Fourteen years ago! We are all a bit tired of it now.” The sisters had had nine between them.

  “Anna’s out of training,” said Carla.

  “Anna cannot have it both ways,” said the prince. And he said it in a tone they were not used to hear from him.

  •

  When Anna’s pregnancy became generally known the men in Rome said meno male, better late than never. Then they made a joke which was mildly blasphemous.

  “Good old Rico.”

  “Rico’s a hero.”

  “He took his time about it, didn’t he want a son?”

  “Rico’s forgotten all about it, he’s so wrapped up in that devil of a girl of his.”

  “They say she was out with the Simonetti boy in a boat this summer, all alone they were, till past midnight. When they came in she said they’d run into rough sea and had to put by. Not a cloud in the night. Rough sea in the next bay, she said.”

  “She is furba.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “The rough sea? No. But I heard it was the notary’s son.”

  “That was another time. They were lost in the hills. Do you believe any of it?”

  “Of her? Of young Constanza? How not? Well, meno male.”

  “Meno male.”

  •

  Giulia Monfalconi said: “I am so very glad. They ought to have a boy. Rico hasn’t missed one so far, but it will be comfortable for him later on.”

  “Later on, boys spend money. There can’t be so much left now.”

  “You would think so, the way Anna’s been carrying on. As a matter of fact there’s still quite a bit, something Anna’s got and can’t touch and that will go to her children.”

  “Well, as long as Anna doesn’t get her hands on it. I suppose it would go to a boy now?”

  “Well no, actually. The way they arranged things over there, Anna can leave it anyway she likes.”

  “Since you know everything—whom would it go to now? I mean if anything happened?”

  Giulia said, “I haven’t the faintest idea. Nor, I’m sure, has Anna. Anna never thinks about her money.”

  “She doesn’t have to!”

  “It’s never only that.”

  “She will one day. We all come to it.”

  Giulia said, “Rico is being very gloomy.”

  “Isn’t he at all pleased?”

  “Not really. He’s too worried about Anna. All those tantrums. The women he knows have never had a day’s illness. Not that she is ill that I know of. And he says it’s too late anyhow, there’s no more point in having sons nowadays, he doesn’t like the new Italy.”

  “Who ever did?”

  “Men mind more when they get older,” Giulia said. “Now he thinks it’s here to stay. Rico is getting on for forty.”

  “Rico! Not that one would say so.”

  “No,” said Giulia smugly.

  Her friend said, “What if it is a girl? It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility.”

  “Heaven help her. No second girl could hold up her head in that house.”

  “It would have to be something pretty special.”

  “Do you know, I have a feeling that this time it won’t,” said Giulia.

  “Rico adores Constanza, doesn’t he?”

  “She’s the one human being in the world
he really cares for.”

  •

  “Mama,” Constanza said, “I just thought of something. Weren’t you late-born yourself?”

  “I suppose I was.”

  “Well, how old was your youngest sister when your mama had you?”

  “About your age.”

  “You see? The same.”

  “Not at all the same,” said Anna crossly.

  “It’s a curious coincidence though,” said Constanza, “I wonder what it means?”

  •

  “Eccellenza—La Signora Trommo-Vailé.”

  “I am not seeing anyone, Socrate.”

  “Very good, Eccellenza.”

  But Mrs. Throgmore-Wylie had been following on the butler’s heels. It was the kind of thing she did. Anna rose; her visitor thrust herself upon her. “Just a glimpse, dearest Principessa . . . just a minute. . . . My entire understanding. . . your great fortitude. . . . These lapses. . . . We are so helpless . . . your magnificent courage. . . .”

  When the prince came home ten minutes later, he said, “I saw la Throgmore flapping down the stairs, when she saw me she bolted. She looked as if she would have crossed herself if she knew how.”

  “Oh leave her alone,” said Anna in a mellow tone: “she’s a person of very fine perceptions.”

  The prince made a face. “She gives me the creeps. Perhaps I’d better cross myself.” He turned the ruby in his pocket. “Well, cara, as long as her visit has given you pleasure. . . .”

  •

  Giorgio, at Anna’s insistence, was born in a nursing home. He was not easy. Presently Anna came to feel herself as the mother of the Gracchi and began to speak of her son, though she did not take much interest in the actual creature who was a perfectly healthy and well-formed baby with the dark eyes of his father and his sister. When the wet-nurse from Castelfonte came for him, Anna was displeased to see a new face. “Why can’t we have the woman we had for Constanza?” she complained, “she was satisfactory.”

  “I don’t think mama is very maternal,” Constanza said to the young man she was doing Latin with. “What a good thing I never noticed at the time.” She added, “Not that I blame her.”