Naturally Viv had taken his side. Alba had always suspected her to be a man’s woman. She now imagined that Viv fancied Fitz for herself, even though she was way past it. Initially, Alba had felt abandoned and alone. She had grown to rely on Viv. She had grown to love Fitz. They had turned into the family she felt she had never had. She looked back with nostalgia on that evening when they had lain under the stars. That evening had been perfect.
For the last few weeks Viv had been ignoring her. On the odd occasion that their paths had crossed on the pontoon, the older woman had pursed her lips and snorted, lifting her chin and striding by, as if it were all Alba’s fault. Fitz had obviously been extremely economical with the truth. Well, if Viv was foolish enough to believe his word over hers, then they could both stew in their own juice. She was going to Italy and when she found her family there, she might just decide never to come back. They’d regret their behavior then, wouldn’t they? Once they’d driven her away.
Rupert, Tim, and James had been only too happy to return to her bed, delighted that Fitz hadn’t lasted the course. “He’s not a runner,” said Rupert happily, now confident that he was. Reed of the River came calling again and she allowed him to take her to Wapping, hiding on the floor of his launch when the sergeant cruised by. She hung out with the boys in the Star & Garter, drank beer and joined in their jokes, reveling in their attention.
Les Pringle from the Chelsea Yacht and Boat Company came by regularly to deliver the post and fill up the water tank. Although far too old to take her to bed, he sat at her kitchen table, drank coffee, and gossiped about the odd people he met, confessing, to her amusement, that no one was as eccentric as Vivien Armitage.
“Strange bunch, writers,” he mused. “You know her Elsan is never full. I think it’s because she makes her men friends pee off the side of the boat.”
“Jolly good idea,” said Alba. “I wish I had thought of that myself. Mind you,” she added bitchily, “she may be clever but have you seen her without makeup? I thought Frankenstein was scary until I saw Viv at two in the morning with her curlers in!”
How could she possibly be lonely with so many friends? she thought, closing her bag and sitting on top to zip it shut. It was the beginning of June. The weather was warm in London so she presumed it would be even hotter in Naples. She had packed most of last summer’s wardrobe and was sure that in a small, provincial seaside town she would cut quite a dash. Lonely indeed!
She sat on her deck, scowling at the squirrels and throwing the odd piece of bread into the water for the ducks. She looked over at Viv’s houseboat. It was pristine. Pots of geraniums hung on the railings and their flowers trailed over the side in long red tentacles. There were also large black boxes of lemon trees and perfect spheres of topiary. Even the windows were polished until they shone. Alba looked about her own deck. She had pots of flowers too, lots of them, but they all needed dead-heading, not to mention watering; it hadn’t rained for a good fortnight. She hadn’t swept it for months. The squirrels loved to play there, leaving nuts and excrement which the wind blew away and the rain washed to some extent, but it wasn’t clean like Viv’s. Neither was it tidy inside and no one had mended the leak. She had left it for Fitz. But Fitz hadn’t come back. There was a hole in her heart that leaked as well, but Fitz didn’t care to mend that either. She looked across at Viv’s perfect home again and was struck with an idea.
On top of the cabin Viv had grown grass. She had gone to the garden center and bought ready-made squares of it. Lush and green. Perfect. Over one weekend she had taken great trouble to treat the roof so that the water had a place to drain away and wouldn’t corrode her ceiling and drip into her bedroom, then she had laid the sod out carefully so that the cabin now looked as if it had acquired an expensive haircut. Viv took great pride in it. She grew daisies and buttercups and was experimenting now with poppies. Alba stared at the grass roof and grinned. I bet Viv hasn’t the slightest idea what a good gardener I am, she thought mischievously. I think I’ll show her just how innovative I can be.
Alba had bought a pretty pink Vespa for riding about town. It was easier to park than her car. Her flight wasn’t until the evening so she had plenty of time to kill. Lunch with Rupert in Mayfair sounded appealing. She had told him she was off to Italy, but not that she planned never to come back.
Before lunch she would make a telephone call to her old friend, Les Pringle. He’d do anything for her. And what she was about to ask him was something which, she was quite sure, he had never been asked before.
Viv sat with Fitz in the little café he regularly frequented just around the corner from his mews house. It was quiet, old-fashioned and made exceedingly good coffee. Sprout lay on the concrete, watching impassively the shoes of the people who wandered by. Viv smoked into the air, her eyes obscured by large black sunglasses that left only her small nose and chin exposed. When he had admired them, calling them fashionable, she had retorted crossly. “I’m not fashionable, Fitzroy, you should know that. I’m above it all. Beyond it. Don’t look at me like that. I told you I didn’t want to see your lovely brown eyes brimming with tears.”
“She leaves tonight, doesn’t she?” he said, heaving a sigh.
Viv exhaled the smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Yes. Shame it’s not on the earlier plane.”
“I should go and say goodbye.”
Viv was appalled. “Goodbye?” she barked. “Good riddance. She’s brought you nothing but misery.”
“And a couple of rather smart shirts from Mr. Fish.”
“Don’t be foolish, darling. If she chose to break up over something so trivial, she couldn’t possibly have loved you. I always predicted it would end in tears and I was right. It didn’t take her long to invite Rupert back into her bed, did it? I don’t imagine she’s shed a single tear. Silly tart. Sad though it is, I think you have to accept that it’s well and truly over and move on. There are plenty of other girls about who would fall over themselves to look after you properly.”
“I don’t want anyone else. I should have tried harder to understand her,” he said regretfully, lowering his eyes.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Fitzroy. Snap out of it. She’s hardly the Sphinx. In fact, she’s very easy to understand. Spoiled, too pretty for her own good, and far too willing to share herself with any Tom, Dick, or Harry who bothers to compliment her. It’s all very sad. She’s looking for a father figure. One doesn’t have to have a university degree to work that out. Maybe you were just too like her father.”
“I was acting!” he stressed.
“No you weren’t,” she said with a knowing smile. “Darling, you’re not a bore and you’re not an old duffer, but you’re conventional, decent, sweet, funny, and without swagger. You don’t cause ripples but neither do you set the world alight in an outrageous fashion. You’re not a show-off. Alba wants a man made of fireworks. She’ll find him in Italy, I’m sure. Italy’s full of bottom-pinching fireworks.”
“You know, you’re wrong. We were very happy together. We laughed a lot. We were great in bed and I was just beginning to flower as a fashion icon.” He grinned boyishly and Viv stubbed out her cigarette. She looked at him for a long moment and her face softened with tenderness. She patted his hand affectionately, as a mother might.
“That’s right, darling. You make a joke of it. It might have been good, but it’s over. Let her go off to Italy. If you’re lucky she’ll sleep with all the fireworks she can find and realize in the end that not one of them has made her happy. If you’re right together she’ll come back. If not, then you’ll just have to marry me.”
“I could do a lot worse,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“And so could I.” She took off her glasses to reveal watery red eyes heavily made up with black mascara. “You know, it’s been hard ignoring her.”
“You shouldn’t take sides.”
“I’ll always take your side, Fitzroy. Even if you committed murder, I’d think the world of you.”
&
nbsp; “Not just because I pull off the most wonderful deals for you?”
“That too, of course. But you’re one in a million. She’s a superficial girl. She’s not going to see the value of you. I don’t want to see you wasting your life away with a woman who thinks only of herself. Why settle for a woman who will only ever know the half of you, and not the better half either? The deeper one digs into your heart, Fitz, the more one appreciates your value.”
He laughed at her sadly. “How very kind, Viv. I don’t know that I deserve quite so much praise. However, I can’t help loving her.”
“I love her too, silly. That’s Alba’s gift.”
Fitz spent the afternoon in the office. He took calls, did his paperwork, ran his eyes over a couple of new manuscripts but at the end of the day he couldn’t remember whom he had spoken to, what letters he had written, and whether or not the new manuscripts were any good. He was due for bridge at Viv’s at seven. The previous few weeks they had deliberately played at Wilfrid’s or Georgia’s so that he avoided a glimpse of Alba or her boat. But he had been distracted then too. Not even the postmortem, which usually had the power to rouse him from the heaviest thoughts, could coax him out of his daydreaming. Sprout now accompanied him everywhere, delighted not to be left at home in the kitchen or in the back of the car. In fact, he was upgraded again to the well in front of the passenger seat and sometimes, if there was room, he lay across the back seat like a Roman emperor, watching the tops of buildings whizz past the window. He was good company, of course, but it wasn’t the same.
Fitz missed Alba. He missed everything about her and was happiest at night when he could lie in the dark remembering the good times. He had enjoyed making love to her, but there was something touching about the way she had lain against him on those nights when she simply wanted to be close. He knew that kind of intimacy was a novelty to her. She hadn’t known how to handle having a man in bed without having sex. Then she had discovered it and quickly thought up a name. Alba was good at names. She called them “pod evenings’ because they lay like peas in a pod, so close they could almost have been one.
Sprout sensed that his friend was out of sorts and wagged his tail as if trying to compensate. Fitz wrapped his arms around his dog and buried his face in his fur. He didn’t want to succumb to tears, not even in front of Sprout. It wasn’t dignified; it certainly wasn’t manly. But once or twice, after a couple of glasses of wine, beneath an exceptionally beautiful sky, he had let himself go.
After he left the office he took Sprout for a walk around the Serpentine. It was too early to go to Viv’s; she was having a drink at the Ritz with her new editor. It was a lovely evening. The sky was pale blue descending into pinks where the sun was low in the sky. The air was warm and balmy, smelling of cut grass. Squirrels scampered over the recently exposed earth, picking up pieces of food dropped by tourists. He thought of Alba, how she hated the little creatures, afraid that they’d find their way into her bedroom and hide beneath the sheets to nibble her toes. That’s what he loved about her; her thought process was unlike anyone else’s. She lived in a world all her own. The tragedy was that, as hard as he had tried, he had not been able to share it with her.
He looked at his watch. He didn’t know what time her plane was due to leave but if he hurried he might just make it to Cheyne Walk before she left for the airport. He should have gone earlier. He should at least have telephoned her to find out how she was. What if she was as miserable as he was? What if she was just waiting for him to extend the olive branch? Had he been too hurt and furious to see beyond it? Viv had advised him not to call her, but he didn’t have to take her advice. He loved Alba. It was as simple as that.
He hurried into the road and hailed a taxi. “Cheyne Walk,” he said, closing the door behind him. “As fast as you can, please.”
The taxi driver nodded glumly. “No one ever says as slow as you like, gov, do they?”
Fitz frowned in irritation. “I imagine not.”
“I always drive as fast as the law permits,” he said, trundling down Queensgate at a gentle pace.
“Most taxis I know take great pleasure in breaking the law,” said Fitz, wishing he’d step on it a bit. Alba might be leaving her boat at that very moment.
“Perhaps they do, but laws are put there for a reason and I abide by them.”
“What about the eleventh Commandment?” Fitz suggested.
“I thought there were only ten.” The taxi driver sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand.
“No, there’s one that’s often forgotten. Thou shalt not get caught.” Even the taxi driver managed a chuckle.
“All right, mate, I’ll do as best I can,” he said and Fitz watched the speedometer push for thirty.
Viv said goodbye to her editor, pleased that she liked the way the current book was going. Ros Holmes was a splendid woman, she thought. Direct, sensible, plain-talking, and warm in a truly British way. Viv couldn’t abide gushers. Ros didn’t gush and never would, however brilliant her work was, and in Viv’s opinion, it was beginning to show flashes of brilliance. She hailed a cab on Piccadilly. It was five to seven, so she’d be a little late; they could wait on her terrace, admire her new roof garden and lemon trees. Then she thought of Alba and felt guilty. Perhaps it hadn’t been right to cut her like that. After all, Alba had spent many evenings in her kitchen, pouring her little heart out over endless glasses of wine. Beneath her sharp talking there was a very lovable girl. Viv was too old to behave in such a childish manner. Alba couldn’t talk to her parents and now she no longer had Fitz. Shameful! She hissed under her breath. I should know better.
“Do drive a little faster, taxi!” she shouted over the drone of the radio. “I’m not a tourist so let’s just hurry on, shall we?” The taxi driver was so taken aback he put his foot down out of sheer panic.
Viv thought it an incredible coincidence when Fitz and she arrived in Cheyne Walk at the same time. Neither spoke; they both knew that it was much more important to get to Alba than to explain why they were hurrying down the pontoon to the Valentina. Fitz knocked on the door. The houseboat looked desolate. Only a gang of squirrels played on the roof of the cabin.
“Bloody hell!” Viv swore. “Are we too late?”
“I think so,” said Fitz.
“Try again!” she encouraged.
“What do you think I’m doing!” he exclaimed irritably, banging on the door with his fist. Still there was no reply and still the squirrels remained, scampering across the roof with their sharp little claws.
“Well, that’s it then. She’s gone.”
“I don’t believe it. I’m such a fool!”
Viv put her hand on his shoulder. “Darling, you weren’t to know.”
“I could have come any day over the last month, but I didn’t. I left her alone when she needed me. I didn’t even telephone to wish her luck.”
“She’ll be back,” she soothed.
Fitz turned to her with angry eyes. “Will she?”
“Well, there’s no point standing here banging. Let’s go and have a drink.” She pulled him away from the door.
It was at that moment of utter despair that they both saw the incredible sight on Viv’s beautifully manicured roof garden. Viv’s hand shot to her mouth as she let out a strangled gasp. Fitz’s face opened into a wide smile.
“Alba!” they both exclaimed in unison.
“How on earth…,” began Viv but her voice trailed off and for once she was lost for words.
“Typical!” said Fitz, feeling a little better.
“Well, I suppose I deserve it,” Viv added with a sigh, shaking her head.
On top of her perfectly clipped grass was a goat, chomping through the buttercups and daisies and probably hoovering up the poppy seeds as well.
Alba was in the cab on her way to Heathrow. She thought of the goat on Viv’s houseboat and hoped it had eaten all the grass by now. With any luck it had fallen into her bedroom and was working its way through
her underwear. Good old Les! But, despite the joke, inside she felt miserable. Fitz hadn’t bothered to telephone to wish her luck and now he never would, because even she wasn’t sure where she was going. She knew she had to take the plane to Naples, the train to Sorrento, and then a boat to Incantellaria. The travel agent had said the roads were narrow and winding and she certainly wasn’t going to risk her life with an Italian at the wheel. They drove on the wrong side of the road for a start. No, much better to take a boat. It was an adventure. Fitz had said she had to go it alone. She was on the brink of discovering her mother. It was both liberating and frightening.
The Second Portrait
18
T he moment Alba sank into the seat on the airplane, her reserves of energy dried up and she yawned sleepily. She was weary. Weary of the same old emptiness and weary of hoping that Fitz was going to fill it. It would be good to get away. To leave it all behind. To start afresh in a new place with new people.
She had deliberately chosen the seat next to the window so that she only had one stranger to contend with. At least on a bus she could sit where she liked and move if an undesirable took the place beside her. In an airplane it was quite different. She was stuck with whomever Fate had chosen to put in 13B. The number thirteen did not augur well. A handsome Italian man entered the plane, clearly fed up with the slow line of people who shuffled up the aisle, pausing every few paces while someone placed their case in the overhead locker. He caught her eye. Alba was not surprised when he didn’t look away. They rarely did. She stared back at him confidently until the sheer boldness of her gaze caused him to drop his eyes to the ticket he held in his hand. She hoped he had been dealt the unlucky number, which wouldn’t be so unlucky, of course, if it belonged to him. As far as she could tell, he was the only vaguely decent man she had seen that evening and it would be nice to talk to someone, considering how nervous she felt about flying into the unknown.
Last Voyage of the Valentina Page 20
