by Paul Bailey
‘Yes,’ said the impatient Matilda. ‘Yes, but why? You haven’t explained why the man speaks like a woman and has no hair on his face.’
Her father and the Anghelescus – Victor, Ana and their son George – laughed at Matilda’s outburst. The more they laughed, the more irritated and bewildered she became. Why were they laughing? They should tell her.
But they were silent. They were annoyingly silent. They were smiling conspiratorially.
‘Why?’
Victor looked at tefan and tefan looked at Victor, and at last it was decided that Victor would provide the explanation.
‘Your driver, Matilda, is a eunuch.’
The word was new to her, without meaning. ‘A eunuch? What is a eunuch?’
George, who was a month older than Matilda and already shaving, sniggered at his cousin’s innocence.
‘The Skoptzi,’ Victor resumed, ‘are eunuchs. The men, that is, not their wives. They marry before they become eunuchs. They have two children, so that there will be a new generation of Skoptzi and then they’ – he looked at Stefan, who was grinning broadly – ‘and then they are parted from their manhood. With a knife. Or scissors, maybe. No, I think with a knife. It must be very, very painful. Will that do, Matilda? Does that answer you?’
Matilda thanked her uncle, although she was still confused, and Victor, who was red in the face, said that what he needed was a strong drink. It was not every day he was required to talk about eunuchs to his thirteen-year-old niece.
‘Remember, Matilda, such people are fanatics.’
‘Our driver was polite.’
‘Even so, even so. Deep down inside he is a fanatic.’
‘But he isn’t deep down inside,’ said George. ‘He has lost the two things that make him deep.’
Then there was laughter again. Ana clapped her hands as cue for the maid to clear the plates and bring in the apricot pudding. She had had enough of eunuchs. She said so in French, to save the maid embarrassment.)
‘My poor Mãmicã didn’t discover what the knife removed until she was married. My father supplied the details. Anyway, the Skoptzi have all gone now, with their terrible self-defiling faith. They’ve disappeared, or died out. Come and see if I have cooked the fish correctly.’
She stood behind him, her arms around his waist. ‘They look fine.’ She kissed the back of his neck and gave him her grateful thanks for not being a fanatical disciple of Peter the Third.
‘He would be crowing if he knew, wouldn’t he? Our father who art not destined for heaven is who I mean. How many wives has he left in the lurch? He has probably stopped counting. If he knew what has happened to me he’d crow his head off – cockadoodle-do – the awful old lecher.’
‘I think you will find, Daisy, that some of his wives left him.’
‘They could have spared themselves the effort. They should have given him a wide berth at first sight.’
‘You haven’t mentioned him in ages.’
‘No time like the present, then. Now that my mind’s in shreds.’
(‘Now that my mind’s in shreds’ – the dramatic phrase, like the other dramatic phrases Daisy Hopkins coined that summer, was spoken flatly, despite its desperate import. ‘My life’s in tatters’ and ‘My little world’s in ruins’ and ‘This house isn’t a home, it’s a prison’ were dull statements of fact, it seemed, not sad revelations. Kitty Crozier listened to her in dismay.)
‘The Trappists are cooking lunch today, God help us. They nagged me, would you believe, into letting them do it.’
‘A nagging Trappist must be something of a novelty.’
‘They’re not Trappists any more when they nag me. That’s when I wish they really were.’
‘There’s a very pleasant aroma wafting out of the kitchen.’
‘I shan’t be eating much. I’ve lost any appetite I had, thanks to him.’
‘Cecil,’ Kitty almost whispered.
‘Him. I have an awful suspicion that Janet is making what I call a complicated sauce.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Kitty smiled, relishing the long-established, but now unexpected, Daisy-ism. ‘That will never do.’
‘Your tongue will stay stuck in your cheeks one day.’
‘I hope not.’
‘Let’s go and find out what the chefs are up to. They’ve been in there the whole morning. Try and pretend everything is fine, even if it isn’t.’
‘We may not to have to pretend. I’m sure we won’t have to.’
‘You sound confident.’
The meal began with watercress soup.
‘This is very good. Who made it?’
‘I did, Auntie Kitty. I have to own up. It isn’t too chilled, is it?’
‘It’s lovely, Janet.’
‘It’s not something I would ever make myself.’
‘But do you like it, Mum?’
‘Like it? Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.’
‘We cooked this together,’ Andrew said as he started to carve the roasted leg of lamb. ‘A joint effort.’
‘That could be one of his awful jokes. “A joint effort” is the sort of stupid thing he says.’
‘Sorry, Ma.’
‘You’re forgiven.’
‘There’s a simple mint sauce to go with it.’
‘Thank the Lord.’
‘Nothing fancy, Ma. Except for the rosemary and the garlic.’
‘The rosemary and the garlic,’ Daisy repeated. ‘The rosemary and the garlic. I see.’
‘We found the recipe in your Cordon Bleu book.’
‘I’ve never used it. I glanced at it once or twice, but I’ve never really used it. He gave it to me some Christmases ago. I don’t know why.’
‘Sorry, Ma.’
‘You’re forgiven.’
‘Will you have a little?’
‘No, Andrew. I will have a lot. Give me a lot. Give me an extra large helping. I’m hungry all of a sudden. I’m ravenous.’
Daisy ate everything – lamb, potatoes, peas – in a fury, Kitty thought. She appeared to be annoyed with the food her children set before her. She glowered at the meat and vegetables.
‘I dispatched that lot pretty quickly,’ she declared, banging her fork on the empty plate. ‘I’ll have some more as soon as you slowcoaches are ready for me. My name’s Oliver Twist today.’
‘Can you wait a moment, Mum?’
‘Can I? Yes. Yes, I suppose I can.’
‘It isn’t like you to eat so much so fast.’
‘You’re right. It isn’t. I’m usually a dainty eater. Dainty old Daisy. Table manners personified. I’ll have some more of the Cordon Bleu lamb whenever you are ready.’
Daisy ate more lamb, in the same furious way, and said yes, and yes again, when Janet offered her a slice of pear tart with ginger ice-cream. Then she stood up and announced that she was stuffed full and needed to lie down, but not on the bed she used to share, God help her, with him. It was the guests’ room for her. That was where she took what rest she could get, which wasn’t a great deal, not with matters as they were at present.
‘We’ll walk the Baskervilles, Mum.’
‘The dogs? Yes, you walk the dogs. Perhaps your aunt will go with you. If she’s in a dog-walking mood.’
‘I think I am, Daisy. I’ll go with them. That was a splendid lunch they gave us.’
‘Was it? Yes, it was, I suppose. To give the chefs their due, it was. They have hidden talents. And that’s all the praise they’ll be receiving from me. We don’t want the Trappists feeling too pleased with themselves.’
‘No, Ma.’
As Buster and Bruiser pulled Janet and Andrew towards the park, Kitty quickened her pace to stay alongside them.
‘It’s a shame Virgil couldn’t eat with us,’ said Janet. ‘He’s working, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he is,’ Kitty lied. The truth was that Daisy had ordered her not to bring him. ‘We don’t want your Romanian casting his gloomy pall over the proceedings.’
‘I can still hear
him laughing, Auntie. He made such a wonderful noise.’
‘He still does. Sometimes.’
‘Are you happy with him?’
‘Yes, Janet. Yes, I am.’
‘Mum thinks you aren’t. She doesn’t understand how you can be. But then, she’s no expert on happiness these days.’
‘Poor Daisy.’
‘Dad’s happy. He’s in some kind of seventh heaven. He does his best to look solemn and serious when I visit him, but it’s only show. His eyes keep giving him away.’
Inside the park, once the dogs were set free and Andrew was running after them, Janet said: ‘Andrew doesn’t come with me. He’s disgusted with Dad. He stormed out in a rage when Dad broke the news to us. He swears he’ll never speak to him again. But I can’t do that. I wouldn’t do that.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘He’s going to have another daughter. Gillian – that’s her name, Auntie – went for a test and they’re going to have a girl. Andrew hates him for starting a new family.’
‘And do you?’
‘I can’t hate him. Or her. I ought to hate them, but I can’t. I think Mum thinks I’m a bit pathetic.’
‘Can you talk about her? What’s your impression of her?’
‘She smiles at me all the time. She dresses in mauve. What else? She has a squeaky voice. And she’s seven years older than me and five and a half years older than Andrew. Which means she’s young, Auntie.’
‘Yes, she is.’
‘She works in the City. Dad says she’s very high-powered. And she’s making him happy. That’s all I know.’
They joined Andrew, who was stretched out on the grass, a panting dog on either side of him.
‘I wish I could get inside Ma’s head. I wish I knew how to help her.’ He sat up. ‘I wish she would just cry. If she could break down and cry then I could put my arms round her and show her what I feel. But the only thing she does is glare and there’s no getting near her. I wish Ma would just bloody well cry, Aunt Kitty.’
That, Kitty felt unable to disclose, had been her own constant wish and still was. She could not remember when Daisy had last shed tears, whether of joy or sorrow. ‘Be patient,’ she advised her unhappy nephew. ‘Try and be patient with poor Daisy.’
(It was foolish advice, she realised even as she spoke. There was no point in his being patient with his impatient mother. On the evidence of the past, he would wait in vain for Daisy’s display of helplessness. Her ‘splendidly average’ son would have to make do with Daisy’s love at arm’s length. It seemed unlikely that he would ever find himself embraced by it.)
‘Some people are better at crying than others, Andrew. I’m the Crozier cry-baby. Don’t expect Daisy to change character overnight. She decided, long ago, that crying is a useless activity.’
Dear Kitty [she read]. You are no doubt aware that your irresponsible father has a birthday in the offing. Although he is now talking of being READY TO MEET MY MAKER (an encounter I shall not be privileged to witness, alas), he behaves with the demented coyness of a superannuated movie glamourpuss when invited to reveal his exact age.
Please descend upon us a second time, if you can muster the requisite courage. I scoured Green Park yesterday in search of the haunted Virgil and was disappointed not to find him. May I ask, impertinently, if you are together? Is he employed somewhere? I hope it is possible for him to accompany you.
Trusting that lunch on the twenty-fifth will be convenient and in joyful anticipation of a repeat performance of the monkey’s bum ritual, I am,
Yours most sincerely,
Derek Harville.
‘Are you in the mood for more diversion, sweetheart?’
‘Always.’
‘Daddy has entered his mystical phase, according to Mephistopheles.’
‘You shouldn’t call him that,’ Virgil snapped. ‘He does not merit such a description. I have met the Devil, Kitty. Believe me. He comes in many disguises and none of them resembles Mr Derek Harville. No, no. Derek is a mere imp, I assure you. He must not be judged by the devilish glint in his eyes. You really must not judge him so.’
‘He’s no match for your father?’ The question leapt from her tongue, as though it needed to ask itself.
She was about to apologise for her crass insensitivity when he replied: ‘Derek is indeed no match for my father. No match at all. Constantin Florescu is streets ahead of him. Boulevards ahead of him. Avenues and squares and motorways ahead of him. One day I will make it clear to you how much ahead of him Constantin Florescu is. But not yet, Kitty. Not quite yet.’
The treasured book of his childhood had the unappealing, uninviting title Opere Complete. The Complete Works. It was from the Complete Works of Ion Creangã that his mother read to him, satisfying his early craving for the mysterious and the magical.
There was one story, however, she did not finish reading. He was nine years old and able to read for himself, but because he was ill in bed with a fever his Mãmicã decided to spoil him. The tale he wanted to hear was the strangest and silliest in the collection. It concerns a Russian soldier, much in love with meat and vodka, who is retired from the regiment he has served since boyhood. He is sent off with only his rifle, his sword, his knapsack and two shining silver roubles. ‘Ivan Turbincã’, ‘Knapsack Ivan’, recounts his wild and comic adventures on earth, in paradise and in purgatory – and then on earth again, where Ivan is doomed to roam for ever.
‘But my father came home before Ivan even got to heaven and that was the end of Mamã’s bedside readings.’
‘For your brother as well?’
‘Oh, yes. Relu was too sensible, even at the age of six, for tall stories. He favoured the real. “That couldn’t happen,” he kept saying. “That’s stupid.” No, the fantastic was not to Relu’s taste. And probably still isn’t.’
(The kindly Radu Sava would take her to meet Major Aureliu Florescu. The Major would kiss her hand and welcome her to his modest apartment. He would inform her that Aureliu was not a common name in his beautiful country, and offer her tea and biscuits, or coffee and biscuits, whichever she desired.
The Major was barrel-chested, with broad shoulders. His pink face was running to fat. ‘You are looking to see Virgil in me. You will not find him. We are not alike. We were never alike. We sprang from the loins of the same mother and have the same father, but there is no likeness between us.’
‘No.’
‘Almost from birth, apparently. You will permit me to present my daughters? All five of them. Diana and I obeyed the orders from above and swelled the ranks of Romanians. I had hoped that one of them, at least one of them, might have been a boy, but I was thwarted in my plans.’
The girls entered the room as if on cue, the youngest leading the procession. Each gave Kitty a quick curtsey before stating her name and age: ‘Elena, three’; ‘Grete, five’; ‘Cornelia, seven’; ‘Nicoleta, nine’; ‘Livia, twelve.’ Each had her brown hair tied with a red ribbon and each wore a navy blue velvet dress that ended just below the knees. White socks covered their ankles. Their black shoes had gold buckles.
To Kitty, who was trying hard not to receive them in the manner of visiting royalty, the Florescu girls seemed like relics from her own childhood. She could imagine Magda Esterhazy-Williams cooing approval: ‘They are five little Dresden shepherdesses. They must be the most elegant young ladies – très, très chic – in Bucharest. Oh, they are lovely, lovely.’
Poor Elena, poor Grete, poor Cornelia, poor Nicoleta, poor Livia, she thought as her eyes passed from one apprehensive child to another – I want to untie those ribbons; I want to free you from those ludicrous clothes; how I want you to stop simpering and preening yourselves.
She asked Radu to ask Aureliu if his daughters ever wore jeans.
‘Diana is worried by tomboys. She loves grooming her pretty chicks and they love being groomed. Jeans are for tomboys and Americans.’
An impossibly pretty woman – a larger Dresden shepherdess, with false
eyelashes – appeared in the doorway. She honoured Kitty with a sad smile. ‘I am the wife of Aureliu. I am Diana. Your refreshments are prepared. Please to follow me into the dining-room.’
Kitty would remember with what dignity Radu Sava responded to Diana’s observation that he was, perhaps, not in good health. ‘You are right. I am not as well as I ought to be. We medics are notorious for not taking care of ourselves. I seldom heed the advice I give my patients.’
He might have answered her with justified bitterness, reminding the pert Diana and her slightly embarrassed husband of the gruesome facts that they surely knew – that he, one of the most respected surgeons in Romania, had been declared insane by a committee of selected experts and removed to an asylum, where he was treated with drugs that robbed him of energy and fed on stale bread and watery soup. He and his fellow ‘lunatics’ had been left to starve to death when news reached the remote country town of the revolution in the capital. The superintendent and his staff had given each of the inmates a last injection before they disappeared into the wintry night. ‘It is good of you to express concern for me. I shall never enjoy the kind of robust health Major Florescu enjoys. These biscuits are delicious.’
‘I made them to my mother’s recipe. I ration myself to one and one only. A woman of my age has to keep a close watch on her shape.’
‘Your children are very quiet, Doamna Florescu. I don’t hear a sound from them.’
‘That is true, Domnioarã Kitty. That is as it should be. They are respectful of their elders. The walls are thin and their voices carry. Today they must be silent. We have told them who you are: a friend – not the wife, of course – a close friend of their uncle. Their peculiar uncle. Livia has some memories of him, but not the others.’
