I fell in very cordially with his suggestion, for it seemed to me that any invitation to Eleanor must in all courtesy be extended to the two young men at the same table. In the end, since it hardly seemed kind to exclude the remaining pair of Art Lovers, all seven of us adjourned to the terrace together. In the course of arranging this, it was discovered that the beautiful young man was Ned; that his broad-shouldered friend was Kenneth; that Eleanor was Mrs. Frostfield; that the pretty blonde girl was Marylou Bredon; that the young man with her was her husband Stanford; that the Major was Bob to his friends; and that I was Julia Larwood. I already knew, of course, that I was Julia Larwood, and the others, I dare say, also knew who they were; but there is presumably some sense in which the sum of human knowledge was increased.
The Major, once our coffee had arrived, tried to go on telling me about a merry prank by which he had become the owner of a twelfth-century Greek icon, formerly the property of a monastery near Paphos. Fortunately, he was interrupted by Kenneth, who told him, in a Scots accent heavy with disapproval, that he shouldn’t have done it; and went on to deplore the damage done to the artistic inheritance of Cyprus by a succession of occupying armies. This did not silence the Major for long; but it diverted his attention. Kenneth became the audience for a series of further anecdotes, illustrating the hardships of military life not known to young men of Kenneth’s generation.
Eleanor and Marylou were sitting next to each other. I settled myself on a footstool at their feet, and thought that I should try to eradicate the unfortunate impression I had earlier made on Eleanor. I remembered that I had seen the name of her firm quite recently, on a capital transfer tax valuation obtained by clients of mine. This gave me some straw for the bricks of flattery.
“I shall not venture,” I said, “to open my mouth in Mrs. Frostfield’s presence on any subject connected with the arts. I expect you know, Marylou, that Mrs. Frostfield is a director of one of our leading firms of experts in antiques and the fine arts.”
It worked like a charm. Insofar as a woman so closely resembling the late Queen Boadicea can be said to simper, Eleanor simpered. “Really,” she said, “Miss Larwood exaggerates. We’re not Christie’s or Sotheby’s, you know.” But she made being Christie’s or Sotheby’s sound rather over-flamboyant.
She melted to such an extent as to ask my own profession. I answered that I was in practice at the Revenue Bar; but the name of her firm was naturally familiar to me, since clients of mine with important collections to be valued for tax purposes so frequently had recourse to the expertise of Frostfield’s. There is no bond like that of mutual clients: we were thereafter as Ruth and Naomi. Well yes, Selena, I do exaggerate — but at least we were “Julia” and “Eleanor.”
I remarked on the coincidence of her being acquainted with the Major. It seems, however, that it is not really surprising. The travel agency which arranged our package has close connections in the world of art and antiques and long experience of making business travel arrangements for those concerned with it.
“Business travel?” I asked. “You are not simply on holiday, then?”
“My dear Julia,” said Eleanor, with a certain coyness, “for accounting purposes, of course, it has to be business travel. You will be the first to appreciate that with our penal system of taxation—”
“Do you mean,” asked the enchanting Ned, taking part in the conversation for the first time, “that you put your holidays down as a business expense for tax purposes?”
“My dear boy, of course,” said Eleanor benignly. “Everyone does.” It was not for me to strike a discordant note by suggesting that such a practice fell on the wrong side of the delicate line between legitimate avoidance and illegal evasion.
It is ironic to reflect that I congratulated myself, as I sat there on the footstool, on the pleasantness of my situation. The soft night air was warm against my cheek; the stars were shining in a velvet sky; the canal was lapping gently against its banks; the Major was telling someone else about the troopship. What more could a woman ask for, to be perfectly contented?
Except, of course, the favours of the lovely Ned. The time had come, I felt, to show an interest in his hopes, dreams and aspirations.
“And you, Ned,” I asked, “are you professionally involved in the fine arts?” I prepared to give sympathetic encouragement to a boyish ambition to discover a lost Giorgione or something like that.
“No,” said the lovely creature. “No, actually, I’m a lawyer, like you.” Less romantic, but easier — one could spend many happy hours discussing recent decisions of the Court of Appeal. “That is to say, I took my degree in law. I am not in private practice.”
“Ah,” I said, “you have gone into industry.”
“No,” he said, looking at me demurely under his beautiful eyelashes. “No, not precisely. I am employed by the Department of Inland Revenue.”
My pen as I write these dreadful words falls trembling from my petrified fingers. I am left with hardly the strength to sign myself
Yours, as always, Julia.
CHAPTER 5
Few of my readers, I imagine, subscribe regularly to the Scuttle: it is not a journal designed for the cultivated taste. Some, however, may on rare occasions have been moved to seek further details of the supermarket corruption scandal or the political vice link probe promised by its towering headlines. They will then have discovered that housewives in East Dagenham have been offered more trading stamps with a purchase of McCavity’s strawberry preserve than with the equally wholesome and delicious confection produced by the factories of McGonegal: that, by the stringent ethical standards of the Scuttle, is a corruption scandal. They will have read that a back-bench Member of Parliament has had dinner in the company of a girl employed two doors away from a Soho nightclub: that is the political vice link. Such readers will sympathize with my own feelings on hearing that the monster of depravity prefigured in Julia’s letter was, after all, nothing worse than a poor, harmless, necessary Civil Servant. “Well, really,” I said.
“My dear Hilary,” said Selena. “You do not seem to appreciate the intensity of Julia’s feelings towards the Department of Inland Revenue. She is under the impression that it is a vast conspiracy having as its sole objective her physical, mental and financial ruin. Her feelings at finding them suddenly in her midst are expressed with remarkable moderation.”
“It’s disappointing,” said Ragwort, “that the young man has not turned out to be a homicidal maniac. But it can’t be helped.”
“I wonder what’s happened to Cantrip,” said Timothy. “They usually let him go by this time.”
It was growing late. The steady filling of Guido’s tables was a sign that in theatres in the neighbourhood final curtains had begun to fall. We asked for our second course.
Cantrip arrived simultaneously with the escalope de veau. His hair and eyes looked blacker than ever, his complexion paler; his fingertips too were slightly blackened from flicking through damp newsprint: he looked like an invitation card for a rather frivolous wake. He took out and placed on the table a strip of paper, evidently torn from the teleprinter.
VENICE 22.30 HOURS LOCAL TIME 9.9.77 VICTIM OF HOTEL STABBING NAMED BY POLICE AS EDWARD WATSON 24 OF LONDON INLAND REVENUE EMPLOYEE BRITISH WOMAN TOURIST STILL HELD FOR QUESTIONING
“Chap who got done in was a chap from the Revenue,” said Cantrip.
“Oh dear,” said Ragwort, looking sombrely at Cantrip.
“That’s what I thought,” said Cantrip, looking glumly at Ragwort.
“If Michael and Desmond are going to talk piffle—” said Selena. The use of their Christian names was a sign of her utmost displeasure.
“She was jolly miffed about that last assessment,” said Cantrip.
Selena began carefully cutting her escalope into very small pieces, looking like a Persian cat which had unexpectedly found itself in low company.
“Few people,” said Timothy, “are delighted by their tax assessments.”
&
nbsp; “Precisely,” said Selena. “Properly regarded, the news is most encouraging. A man from the Revenue might be murdered by anyone.”
“Let us,” continued Timothy, “be sensible. None of us, surely, can seriously believe that Julia has stabbed anyone. It’s not simply a question of character, it’s a matter of competence. Even if she wanted to, which she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to do it.”
“That’s true,” said Cantrip, looking more cheerful. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“So I don’t doubt that the whole thing is simply a mistake and in the long run we can sort it out. It would be rather nice, though, if we could get it cleared up before there’s been too much publicity.
It’s not the sort of thing that’s good for one’s practice.”
“That,” said Selena, “is certainly a point. Once solicitors start thinking of Julia as liable to intermittent fits of homicidal mania, they may begin, however irrationally, to question her soundness on the Taxes Acts. Will there be anything in tomorrow’s Scuttle?”
“Not a chance,” said Cantrip. “I told them it was all incredibly libellous and too sub judice for words. Which it may be, for all I know. Anyway, they’ve dropped it like a hot potato.”
“Oh, well done, Cantrip,” said Selena.
“And I rang a chap I know at the news agency and asked him if he’d noticed they’d got a story pouring out over the teleprinters which would land them with a fantastic claim for damages. And he hadn’t, so he was jolly grateful to me for telling him. That’s why they’re not mentioning Julia’s name any more.”
Mollified by these achievements, Selena summarized for Cantrip’s benefit the contents of the previous letter before proceeding to the next.
Terrace of the Cytherea.
Friday evening.
Dearest Selena,
I have found a convenient place in which to enjoy undisturbed the pleasures of writing to you and of drinking Campari before dinner. One corner of the terrace is divided from the rest by a little trellis, over which there grows some kind of vine or similar shrub. The vine or similar shrub is not, by the highest standards of horticulture, doing terribly well; but it is enough to screen one from observation by anyone coming on to the terrace whom one might wish to avoid. As it might be, the Major. There is also a clear view of the bridge to the annexe, so that one is aware of the approach from that direction of anyone whom one might wish, by apparent accident, to meet. As it might be, the lovely Ned.
The discovery of Ned’s appalling profession has made me, as you may imagine, implacable in my resolve. Have the Revenue, in their demands on my time, my energy and my meagre earnings, been deterred by any sentiments of pity or remorse? No. Shall I, if Ned’s virtue were the dearest jewel they own, show more forbearance in pursuit of it? No, I shall not. “Canals if necessary” is my watchword now.
It was in this frame of mind that I woke to greet the morning, personified by a waiter bringing coffee and rolls. (He is a rather pretty waiter, young and very thin, with shy dark eyes, like those of a gazelle; but my heart is set on the enchanting Ned and I took no notice of him.) On beginning to dress, however, I met with a setback.
Graziella had asked us, since the day’s excursion was to include places of divine worship, to refrain, if female, from wearing trousers, if male, from wearing shorts. I had been disposed to welcome any prohibition designed to protect the public from the sight of the Major’s legs. For myself, I foresaw no difficulty in complying, for I have with me two skirts of suitable length for the daylight hours. One has a few small cigarette burns and the other has lost the button which ought to secure the waistband; but these seemed minor defects, not calculated to offend the devout.
To make a final choice between them, I consulted the looking-glass, assisted in a critical examination of my appearance by the sunlight pouring in from the window behind me. It was thus that I discovered that neither, in these conditions, has the opacity required for perfect decorum. In the dim interior of the churches they would be unobjectionable; in the sunlit exterior, however — you will see the difficulty.
But I was not dismayed. I remembered that while I was packing you had advised me — foreseeing, it may be, with wonderful prescience, this very contingency — to take a petticoat. There was some difficulty, you may recall, in finding one which would not, if extracted from my suitcase and waved in the air by an over-zealous Customs officer, expose me, by its grubby and ragged condition, to the censure of my fellow passengers; but our searches were at last rewarded by finding a perfectly clean one, almost unworn.
I remembered, when I put it on, why it was almost unworn. It is the one I bought last January in a sale, and which turned out, when I got it home, to be four inches longer than any of my skirts.
“One can’t think of everything,” said Selena.
“No, of course not,” said Timothy.
Someone once explained to me that this sort of thing is all due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which requires that everything shall tend towards Chaos. One cannot struggle for ever against the laws of physics: I began to think it might be best, however compulsory the excursion, to return to bed and read the Finance Act, very quietly, until someone came and told me what to do. Someone, in the end, usually does.
Before I could give effect to my indecision, there was a knock on the door: Marylou had come to make sure I was ready for the excursion. I told her of my difficulty.
“Julia, honey,” she said, “couldn’t you just cut four inches off the hem of your slip?”
“That,” I said, “would be a most ingenious solution. But impracticable. One would need a pair of scissors.”
“No problem, honey,” she replied. “I have my dressmaking scissors in my room.”
Off she went to fetch them, and, on her return, sheared away, in a matter of moments, the four inches of material which had divided me from the presentable.
It was thus, after all, only a few minutes after half past eight that we arrived in the entrance hall to begin our excursion round Venice.
“Interesting,” said Ragwort.
“Interesting?” said Cantrip, almost choking on his steak Diane. “Interesting? Absolutely sickening is what I call it. I don’t know what it is about Julia. She only has to sit back and look helpless — which, God knows, I admit she is — and some misguided girl turns up and starts taking care of her. It’s just like a baby cuckoo. What a baby cuckoo does is get itself hatched in someone else’s nest. Then it just sits there with its beak open, looking hungry. And the birds the nest belongs to, instead of chucking it over the edge, get this irresistible urge to shovel food down it. Same effect as Julia has on girls. And what’s more, they’re usually jolly attractive girls, who ought to have something better to do than collect worms for Julia.”
“The ways of Nature,” said Selena, “are indeed very wonderful.”
“What I thought interesting,” said Ragwort, “was the dressmaking scissors. There are, of course, various sizes and types of scissors used in dressmaking. But one could not conveniently use a small pair to cut off the hem of a petticoat — it must have been a proper pair of tailor’s scissors. With long blades. Quite long and quite sharp. And pointed, of course, at the ends. You did say ‘stabbed,’ didn’t you, Cantrip?”
There were no defaulters among us except Ned’s large friend Kenneth. The rest of us, in a group which also included a score or so of foreign Art Lovers, followed obediently in the footsteps of Graziella. Graziella takes conscientiously her duty to instruct us in the general and artistic history of Venice: I feel that she may require us, at the end of the holiday, to take an examination in these subjects. I listen to her, therefore, with the utmost attention, for I would not wish in that event to disappoint her.
The excursion began in the Piazza San Marco, described by Napoleon as the finest drawing-room in Europe. This showed, said Graziella, that Napoleon was a very silly man, because the Piazza is not in the least like a drawing-room: in reality,
though certainly spacious and elegant, it is the forecourt to St. Mark’s Basilica, designed to permit the visitor, before admiring in detail the church’s rich mosaics and luxurious columns, to appreciate as a single unity the grandeur of its incomparable facade. We duly appreciated the facade.
The Venetians, it seems, adopted St. Mark as their patron saint in the ninth century, at which time the mortal remains of the Evangelist were reposing in Alexandria. To demonstrate their piety, the Venetians sent out a body-snatching expedition, which abstracted the sacred corpse from its resting-place and brought it back through Customs packed between two sides of pork, so discouraging investigation by the fastidious Muslims.
This reminded the Major of a funny thing that happened to him in the Lebanon in ’52. I began to worry about Desdemona again.
Having secured the body, they spent three hundred years building a church to house it, during which time they pillaged the Levant for suitable building materials. In the meantime, they lost the corpse; but they did not allow this to discourage them. The opportunity to put the finishing touches to the masterpiece came in 1204, when they more or less hijacked the Fourth Crusade. The Crusaders had meant to go to Jerusalem; but the Venetians, who were providing the transport, said about halfway across the Mediterranean that it would be a better idea to go and sack Byzantium. So they went and sacked Byzantium; as a result of which the Venetians acquired an empire in the Eastern Mediterranean and the four horses of antique bronze which stand on the balcony of St. Mark’s Basilica.
From there we went on to the Doges’ Palace. Graziella instructed us to note the development, as thereby exemplified, from the Gothic to the Renaissance style, and gave us a little lecture on the Venetian constitution. She spoke of it tenderly: it had been, it seems, a splendid constitution, full of senates and committees and checks and balances and other things delightful to the political theorist.
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