A Favourite of the Gods and a Compass Error

by Sybille Bedford

  There was not one novel or play written after 1699, he told her, that would not be immeasurably better for a cutting.

  “Why 1699?”

  “The death of Racine. Have you re-read Stendhal? Recently? Well, do. You’ll find a staggering amount of sheer tosh. I started cutting La Chartreuse the other day—such an improvement.”

  “How is your work going? Or don’t you do any?” said Constanza.

  “Nobody works for the Bar exam. Nobody who’s going to be the slightest use.”

  “Simon, what are your reasons for not going to war?”

  “Number One apart, because it’s a plot between the old, the stupid, and the wicked. And they are going to be hoisted by their own petard.”

  “That’s no consolation.”

  “No consolation,” he said, “at all.”

  Simon was not her type, far from it. She had never much liked fair men, and she had no patience with the to her ridiculous predilection of English and American women for tall ones. Height appeared to her of little use, off a tennis court, and aesthetically not an asset. But she did find him a comfort and a good companion.

  •

  The Greek poet had not been out a fortnight when he was reported missing. For a week Constanza dared hardly breathe. She took on extra shifts at her canteen, even so the day had many more hours. Again Simon, who always seemed to know without letting on, was a great help.

  Then she learnt that her Greek was at a base hospital. And soon she had a letter from him—rather disgruntled—saying that he had a splintered elbow and was being shipped to England. She and Simon set off for a long walk across the park. It was a November day with a low sky and not cold; Constanza was like a creature released.

  Suddenly Simon said: “One of the things I love about you is the way you wear your beauty lightly. Like a sable coat flung on like so much sacking.”

  “The Veneto-Roman type fined down by English blood?”

  He said: “You are ripping.”

  “Cut it out, caro,” Constanza said. “One at a time.”

  “What can you mean? Good God——!” He was taken aback, even shocked. “The principessa? She’s old enough to be my mother.”

  “You told everyone how madly in love you were with Giulia Monfalconi. You didn’t object to the autumnal. She’s older than mama.”

  “That was in another country,” he said.

  “All my tutors used to be in love with mama.”

  “I am devoted to her, I worship her, as she would say. And quite true. She’s an angel to me and great fun to be with. I look on her as an aunt, the most delightful one I ever had. If she’d been my mother, I daresay I might have turned out a good son.”

  “She has a son,” said Constanza.

  “Yeah: the little boy in Rome. What’s he like, your brother?”

  “A little boy,” she said. “He came too late.”

  “The marchesa was the ideal,” said Simon. “She was the fore-runner. A logical step. Let’s keep it in the family.”

  “I don’t like that kind of talk,” said Constanza. “You might leave papa out of it.”

  “What unexpected prejudice in a wholesome pagan.”

  “Wholesome pagans have taboos,” she said.

  “You know what I heard people here say about what drove your mother from Rome?”

  “What?”

  “A pagan taboo, all right.”

  “What?”

  “Incest.”

  “Great God! Who said that? They must be mad.”

  “That brigadier’s wife for one. Broad hints—something indescribably terrible . . .”

  “Mama! Oh, if only mama could learn to call a spade a spade. My poor father. And with whom for heaven’s sake?”

  “Hasn’t the prince any near female relatives?” “What next? Don’t make me laugh. What do they take him for? The Italian Lord Byron?”

  “That’s what your mother thinks she is: Lady B. One cannot carry on the way she does without a precedent.”

  “Don’t say that, I can’t stand that woman; the moral Clytaemnestra, she’s one of my bêtes noires. Mama is not like her. Burning the memoirs—I can never get over that.”

  “Don’t you see the principessa doing exactly that?”

  “And you say you’re devoted to her.”

  “Most women would burn a manuscript. And don’t forget that Lady Byron is supposed to have had great charm. A well-bred, well-educated woman of high principles, strong character, by no means all narrow views, and a great deal of charm. Apt to surround herself with a crew of malefic flatterers. Yes, my dear, let it sink in.”

  “I’d rather not,” said Constanza.

  “You wouldn’t burn a manuscript. That’s another thing that fascinates me about you—just as much as the Veneto-Roman looks—your strangely masculine code. And your being such a compound of Mediterranean and Anglo-Saxon elements.”

  “One of your interests,” she said.

  “Yes indeed. I know you’re occupied at present. Never mind, I shall apply again.”

  “One day, Simon Herbert, you’ll go too far.”

  •

  The Greek poet was home. Constanza made several tedious and uncomfortable journeys to his hospital somewhere in the North-East. She found him grumpy, monosyllabic and uncouth. His wound was not much but it was unlikely that he would be able to bend the elbow joint of his left arm again. Quite soon he was passed unfit for active service. By the end of the month she was out of love with him.

  •

  “A wonderful Christmas present, my darling,” Anna said. She did not call it Christmas, she said Natale. “The very best you could have given me.”

  Constanza looked blank.

  “I am so very happy. Happy, for the first time in I do not like to say how many years.”

  “What about, mama?” Constanza said, making her voice cold.

  “You need not tell me, darling,” her mother said, “I know everything.”

  “Know what?” said Constanza now in considerable alarm.

  “We won’t speak about it yet if you don’t want to. You were always a reserved girl. I don’t want you to feel rushed, I want you to think that you can take your time. Not like me, who was fatally rushed into everything. . . . I had no mother to stand by me and advise. Well, we won’t say another word now. But I shall treasure it as my lovely secret Christmas present.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, mama, come out with it,” said Constanza.

  “Well, darling, Simon has spoken to me. Brilliant boy though he is, he has an old-fashioned side. So he came to me.”

  “Simon has talked to you? What did he tell you?”

  “I need hardly repeat that—but of course you want to hear. How much he admires you, how much you mean to him, that he has reason to believe you will consent to marry him.”

  “The cad!”

  Anna turned colour. “Don’t tell me it isn’t true? Oh, don’t say he’s made it up. You don’t love him? Constanza!”

  Taken by surprise, Constanza said, “Oh, I do rather love Simon.” Anna breathed intense relief. “There, there, darling. What did I tell you, you mustn’t be rushed.”

  Constanza said: “There hasn’t been one word of marriage; and there won’t be.”

  “But dearest girl, why?”

  “One doesn’t marry like that,” said Constanza, “just like that. For a bit of love.”

  Anna chose to laugh. “You don’t know yet, my dear, what one marries for.”

  Not at all nicely, Constanza said: “Perhaps you can tell me?”

  “I was dazzled,” Anna said, and a soft look came into her eyes.

  “Oh, you were then? Ah, you see—it isn’t the best reason, the best way to marry.”

  Anna’s voice was still dreamy. “I was dazzled by Italy.”

  Constanza later recalled that her mother’s manner at that moment was so unlike her usual self that it came to her in a flash that this was the first time she had heard her mother speak the truth.
It was as if Anna had gone into a kind of trance. The next minute she was as before.

  “And now I am so happy, you’ve made up so much for me; and for the present we won’t say more. I only wanted you to know how glad I am—and of course, you silly girl, you can marry for love: I shall see to it that you can. I told Simon that much. Oh! it’s a lovely American marriage! With dear Simon having his way to make—just two young people starting out in life.”

  Constanza was very angry. She was so angry that had it not been for the thought of her mother, the thought of taking away her new companion, she would have put an end to it then and there and asked Simon to leave the house.

  “It is unforgivable,” she told him. “You don’t know what you started. It’s a disaster. And you do know: you haven’t even the excuse of not knowing her. You know her as well as I do, better, and I am beginning to know her too. It was a wicked, heartless thing to do. Why did you?”

  “To give her pleasure. To provide cover for some of our indiscretions.”

  “To gain an ally,” said Constanza.

  “Yes. Yes of course, that too. Darling, I admit I’ve stolen a march on you. But what’s so monstrous about it? Where’s the disaster? Ah, if you were not going to marry me.”

  “Simon, let’s get one thing quite clear: I’ve no intention of marrying you.”

  “Why so absolute?”

  “It’s not the kind of marriage I can see for myself.”

  “What kind do you see?”

  She said seriously, “I always meant to make a mariage de raison.”

  “By that, do you mean money?”

  “Not necessarily. I would think of money if the situation of either of my parents made that desirable, or if they told me so.”

  “You, yourself, don’t care much for money?”

  She considered this. “No, not for money in itself. But I live on money. We all eat, even the ones who don’t cook. I’ve had no experience of having no money, not enough money, because that’s what it really is. Even paupers get some money. The way I’ve been brought up, enough is quite a bit. I could still change, but it’ll have to be soon. I’m not afraid of work—but who’d pay me for what? I’ve read a few books and I can milk a goat. I could run a farm, an Italian farm, at a small loss. But if I were poor I wouldn’t have a farm.”

  “Would you mind where the money came from, from you or from your husband, as long as there was enough?”

  “I wouldn’t care two straws.”

  “Then what is your marriage of reason? Position?”

  “That doesn’t come into it. I would want a man to have a place in the world, but it wouldn’t matter what place and where as long as it was part of himself; it could be outside the world.”

  “An outsider?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I’m an outsider,” said Simon.

  “I don’t think so,” said Constanza. “Only in Northumberland.”

  “You’re still not awfully definite about your reasonable marriage.”

  “It’s only an instinct I have. There must be some community of interests, perhaps a common aim, great liking for one another, appreciation, tolerance——”

  “It sounds like a description of us,” he said.

  “It is not.”

  “You left out love,” he said.

  “Love does not last. And when it’s gone it leaves the wrong kind of residue for a life in common.”

  “You are not looking forward to a life without love?” he said. “Mutual tolerance is an ingredient of a marriage of reason,” said Constanza.

  He said, “Sometimes love does last.”

  “Not with me. Not so far. And unless I’m much mistaken, Simon, not with you.”

  “I’m going to settle down once I’m married.”

  “I shall not,” said Constanza. “And now, may I turn the tables? Why are you so set on marrying me? If I am your marriage of reason, you had better think again. For one thing it is not reasonable to marry a woman against her judgement; for another, if you are thinking of money—you are thinking of money——?”

  “It has its alluring aspects.” “I shouldn’t put my trust in that trust fund. I’d back mama against any bank in the United States.”

  “I’m aware of that. We shall have to leave it with the brilliant Mr. Baxter; meanwhile it will be awfully jolly while it lasts.”

  “You are not telling me that you are going to make, or trying to make, thousands at the Bar?”

  “I am not telling you that,” said Simon. “Nevertheless I might.”

  “You’d better look for some poor heiress, caro. If you damped down on your insolence just a bit you would be so successful. And I think you know how to temper your manners to the shorn lamb.”

  “The heiress might not have a mother to throw in. No, Constanza, you are my marriage of reason. Almost everyone else is a sham, like my beloved principessa, which is interesting, but I don’t want to marry one, and I would never want to marry a woman who was not a beauty, and I couldn’t stand a beauty who simpered, who was a Miss or thought about her complexion or her figure, and I couldn’t marry a fool, or a woman who couldn’t talk back to me—you are what I want and I’ve enlisted your mother’s help and I shall insist and insist again, and I love you very much and would marry you with the trust fund down to the last dollar if I could manage to borrow five hundred pounds, and we will have a roaring life and wash our hands of the bloody mess other people’ve made and enjoy ourselves.”

  Constanza said nothing.

  “Anyhow who is this ideal husband of yours? Where is he?”

  “He isn’t an ideal husband, he is just a man I should be proud to marry.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “No. Not even in fiction. I have no idea what he’ll be like. But I shall know him when we meet.”

  “That sounds like love.”

  “So much is,” said Constanza.

  “And meanwhile, darling, you had better take me.”

  “Meanwhile,” she said, “is for people who do not know when to wait.”

  •

  The next day was Christmas Eve of the first Christmas of the war. Simon had said he’d be damned if he went home this year and serve them right. Of course, dear boy, Anna said, you must stay with us. She, in her eclectic way, had kept up with some and discarded other of her native customs. Christmas had never meant much to her. So during the years in Rome, she usually gave a large dinner-party for Thanksgiving but was content to go through Christmas as the Romans used to, doing a little eating and drinking, visiting the flowered festive churches. Her only personal contribution had been the fussless giving of some excellent presents. So Simon found himself spending the whole festival without a carol, a cracker or a suet pudding. On Christmas Eve the three of them with Mr. James sat down to a well-cooked dinner which ended with fresh fruit. Later on the ladies drove to midnight mass, and on their return there was very hot soupe à l’oignon gratinée and some vintage champagne. (Since it is always a pleasure to record such things: it was Krug 1904, and because of the onion soup it was Extra-Dry, not Brut, and there was as much of it as anyone might drink.) Simon learnt from an envelope that he had been given what amounted to a blank account at his booksellers. “I always think it’s nicer to be able to choose oneself,” said Anna.

  “I do agree,” said Simon in a loving voice.

  December 25th and 26th were much like any other days except that, none of them wishing to venture out, they played some three-handed bridge. There was also a large Strasbourg pâté which Simon and Constanza ate up in one sitting. Anna was tactful and did not say a single hinting word. She was bustling and smiling in a way that reminded Constanza of her mother in the early days, and this new serenity struck fear into her heart. She would look at Simon, sunning himself in full favour, and could not forgive him. Simon felt he had never spent a more agreeable Christmas.

  5

  CONSTANZA was defeated. Things were slipping and she did not stop them. Too much
was tempting. Her growing guilt about her father made her feel that anything salvaged from their whole situation would be so much to the good. Fate had placed her so that she could do nothing for him now; instead it had given her what looked like a chance to heal her mother’s life. The death in France (and her own defeat last summer) had unstrung her sinews, she no longer held her own destiny so dear. There was one more thing that weighed with her, pointed in Simon’s favour: he was Hermes, he was the messenger, it was he who had come to her with the ring from Rome.

  Simon, pleased with himself, was off to Northumberland to bear his news. “Your turn soon, darling. Unless they cut me off with a shilling.”

  “You see what you’ve let me in for, Darkest England.”

  “If they take to you, you may find a fire in your bedroom, but I bet the bath will be the coldest you have ever been in.”

  “At Castelfonte there were lizards and no water.”

  “But a marble tub.”

  “Oh yes, marble tubs. Will they take to me?”

  “Never been known to do so. Oh, my father’ll be civil.”

  “I’m just writing to papa.”

  “Will he take to me?” said Simon.

  “You say he already has. Papa doesn’t like change.”

  “What about my being a heretic?”

  “Not a thing that would occur to him.”

  “All the world belongs to the True Church?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell him?”

  “One step before another.”

  “But we’re going to Rome the minute the war is over. I want to be the son-in-law: il genero.”

  “It isn’t over. I said one step before another.”

  “Would you like me to become a Catholic, my sweet?”

  “That will be quite unnecessary.”

  “I would, you know, like a shot. Just to show them. I’d love to see my mother’s face. A Papist!”

  “Things done to spite usually turn against one.”