Prodigies

by Francis King

  To his amazement, he was aroused by the sound of splashing, approaching nearer and nearer. It was the boy, who was clearly a swimmer quite as strong as he was. Now, for the first time, the boy looked straight at him. He grinned. Then he executed an elaborate series of dives, twisting and turning, head over heels, heels over head, his head or his whole body disappearing and re-emerging sometimes within a second or two and sometimes after so long an interval that Philip feared that something had happened to him. They faced each other. Philip laughed and the boy laughed. Since the boy was now near enough, Philip put out a hand and rested it on his shoulder. The boy did not dart away, as Philip had half expected.

  ‘I’d like to take a photograph of you,’ Philip said in Italian, with the Sicilian accent that, with his faultless ear, he had so easily acquired.

  ‘Of me?’ Treading water, the boy pointed to his still entirely hairless chest. ‘A photograph? I’ve have never had a photograph of myself.’

  ‘Well, you will now.’

  ‘The Baron takes many photographs.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll use his camera. He gave me some lessons. But whether I’ll be any good at it … You’ll have to sit very still. As you were sitting in the boat,’ he added.

  Side by side, they began the long swim back. When they had traversed half the distance, Philip paused for a rest and the boy, though he did not need one, paused too. Once again they faced each other, treading water. The boy put up a hand and pushed the seaweed-like hair up off his sunburned forehead. ‘When?’ he asked.

  ‘When?’

  ‘When does the signore wish me to come for the photograph?’

  ‘This afternoon? About four? We need light, sun, a lot of sun.’ He gazed up at the cloudless sky. He pointed. ‘A lot of light, a lot of sun.’ A thought came to him: ‘But perhaps in the afternoon you have a siesta.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll come. About four.’

  ‘About four.’

  As the boy’s father propelled the clumsy boat back to the shore, and the boy, his head averted, once again gazed out to sea in a detachment totally at odds with the intimacy of their encounter in the water, Philip looked up again into the cloudless sky and ran a hand over his shoulder, feeling its smoothness and warmth. He thought: This is happiness. Yesterday I was life-sick. Now, by some miracle, I have been cured.

  After a lunch of pasta and grilled red mullet, the Italian couple disappeared, to Philip’s relief. He stood at a window and watched them trudge up the hill. She was carrying a basket, presumably with his soiled clothes in it. She, but not he, was going to return in the evening to get him his meal.

  Eventually the boy arrived, heralded by his whistling of the same song, La Piccola Colomba, that Maria had been singing in the kitchen. Philip had never heard it before. He assumed that it must now be popular in Sicily. It could not be a folk-song, it was too sophisticated for that. Away from his father, the boy was wholly relaxed. He strutted about the room, examining the various objects in it. When he picked up a silver cigarette box, Philip thought that perhaps he was going surreptitiously to pocket it. But he merely raised the lid, removed one of the Baron’s black Egyptian cigarettes and, having, looked enquiringly over to Philip – ‘May I take it?’ the look said – put it in his mouth when Philip smiled and nodded. Philip rummaged in a trouser pocket and produced a small enamelled box, bought on a visit to Constantinople, in which he always carried his vestas. The boy, standing close, head tilted upwards, let him light his cigarette for him. He drew deeply, drew again, and then began to cough, his eyes filling with tears. Philip laughed and, after a moment of looking annoyed, the boy joined in the laughter. Then he threw himself down on to the rickety chaise-longue and leaned back, his cap, which he was still wearing, tilting down low over his forehead. He grinned and drew again on the cigarette. He held it out before him and stared down at it through narrowed eyes. There was something over-familiar, even impertinent about all his behaviour. But so far from upsetting Philip, that merely excited him.

  Eventually, after they had talked for a while – Philip had offered the boy some of the wine left over from the previous evening, and had then poured out tumblers for each of them – Philip got up and lugged out of a closet the cumbersome plate camera and then searched for the black hood, which he eventually found on the floor of the closet, behind a cabin trunk. The boy made no attempt to help him as he carried the camera and the plates for it out on to the veranda. There was a well of sunshine there, in one corner, and the three rocks could be seen far beyond it, with the sea, now a wholly unreal cerulean in the afternoon light, stretching out between. If only it were possible to photograph in colour! He wanted to catch that grey-green of the rocks and that extraordinary blue of the sea; but most of all he wanted to catch the flesh-tints – the honey-colour of the shoulders, the ivory of the torso, the brown of the arms – of the body that had been revealed to him in the water.

  Having set up the camera to his satisfaction, Philip went back into the house and climbed up to the attic where he knew, from his previous visit, that the Baron kept his props: a goatskin; Pan pipes; a wreath of laurel; a pair of sandals, painted gold with thongs of red leather; a toga. He thrilled, even as he descended the stairs, at the thought of dressing the boy in them.

  ‘What’s this? I’m not going to put those on. Not on your life! No, no!’

  He might have been asking the boy to dress up as a girl.

  ‘Please! For the photograph. I want you to look like a young Greek god, oh, hundreds and hundreds years ago.’

  The boy burst into derisive laughter. ‘A Greek god!’ He pulled a face. ‘Are you crazy? I heard that some odd things went on with the Baron in this villa but I never thought …’

  Philip went back into the house and returned with a handful of bank-notes. He held them out. ‘ Yes? Well?’

  The boy stared at them in stupefaction. Then he put out a hand, the nails bitten to the quick, and snatched at them with a joyful laugh. ‘Now you’re talking!’

  Philip exposed plate after plate. Having first been uncooperative, the boy was now altogether too co-operative, adopting ludicrous attitudes and pulling extravagant faces. At one point the laurel wreath tipped over and all but covered his face, at another he somehow managed to snap the Pan pipes in two.

  Eventually, his excitement constantly mounting, Philip indicated that he wanted to photograph the boy in the nude. ‘ No, no! Certainly not! No!’ The boy was vehement, shaking his head, his cheek flushed with both wine and his outrage. Again Philip went back into the house, again he returned with a fistful of banknotes.

  ‘Oh, all right then. All right!’

  The sun was beginning to sink when the photography session ended. Between them, they carried all the equipment – the ponderous camera, the two heavy boxes of fragile plates, the black cloth, the ludicrous costumes and props – back into the house. The boy took hold of Philip’s hand, not as an act of intimacy but to examine the rings on it. He pointed at one ring, a Roman intaglio of a bull in an elaborate early nineteenth-century setting. ‘For me?’

  ‘No, not that one. That was given to me by my wife. On our marriage. But you can have this one.’ He held out his hand and pointed to his signet ring. It was incised with the crest of the Admiral’s family, since his own family had none.

  ‘Really? Truly?’ The boy was overjoyed.

  ‘But first you must do something for me. Something small but important to me.’

  The boy nodded, dubiously. He understood, of course he understood. The Baron had often said that all these Sicilian ragamuffins understood.

  ‘Yes?’

  The boy nodded.

  Philip once again slept deeply. But this time the sleep was not dreamless, as on the night before. He dreamed of the polder, stretching on and on behind the house, far vaster than in reality. In the distance he could see Alexine and Sammy trudging hand in hand across it, with that emaciated dog, that dog that he had wanted to shoot, trailing, shaggy head lowered, behind them
. He set off determined to catch them up. But though he constantly quickened his pace, eventually breaking into a sprint, he could not do so. The distance between him and them inexorably lengthened.

  All at once he heard a flapping, as of clothes put out to dry in a high wind, all around him and above him. He looked up. The sky was darkening with a vast flock of those huge, ungainly, black birds that he had seen from the ship. What were they? What did they want?

  It was then that he awoke. A door had slammed – or was it a window? He must have left one or other open. He sat up in bed and almost at once, hearing footsteps, jumped out of it, knocking over the table beside it as he did so, so that a half-drunk glass of the raw, black wine overturned and crashed to the floor, shattering to fragments and splashing its contents up on to the ragged silk that covered a settee. ‘Who’s that?’ For a moment he thought that it must be the boy. Then he could see the intruder in the moonlight. His face, expressionless, implacable, like that of some piece of statuary, was not the boy’s but his father’s.

  ‘What do you want?’

  But Philip already knew, as the man, arm outstretched, rushed at him.

  Chapter Eight

  THE HEAD OF THE OLD MAN, Frederick van der Warsenberg, who had succeeded the Admiral, now dead, as Grand-Marshall, appeared around the carriage door like that of a beetle. He clutched the extended arm of the coachman and stepped unsteadily down from the carriage. He had been obliged to do many unpleasant things in the course of a long and adventurous life, but this, he thought, was one of the most unpleasant. As he tottered forward on his stick, Hans leapt out of the carriage behind him. His narrow handsome face was extraordinarily pale and it was disfigured by a stye angrily erupting along the left eye-lid. Both men were dressed entirely in black, their shoes and top-hats gleaming.

  As soon as she saw them, Harriet knew, as though she herself had been pierced by the knife that had abruptly ended Philip’s life, that something terrible had happened. But she smiled and held out her hands to the old man in greeting, as she said, with an assumed easiness: ‘General – how good to see you! When I got the message … What brings you here?’

  In a voice husky both with the winter bronchitis from which he was suffering and from emotion and stress, he said: ‘Madame – please sit down. Please.’ He pointed to the sofa.

  But Harriet had now turned to Hans. ‘ Hans! I’d no idea that you were back. But what’s become of my husband? Didn’t you return together?’

  ‘Please sit. Please,’ the General repeated on a note of desperation. He clutched his top hat before him with hands swollen with arthritis and blue with cold from the long carriage ride.

  Harriet crossed slowly to an upright chair, not to the sofa at which the General had pointed, and seated herself. Her manner was outwardly calm, despite the turbulence within her. She had been brought up in the belief that any public show of emotion was unladylike.

  ‘I have some terrible news. You must be brave. I know you will.’

  She stared across at him, plump chin uptilted and lips compressed. She waited. Then, as he floundered, emitting a rasping cough, hand raised to mouth, she prompted: ‘Yes, General? What is it?’

  ‘Your husband …’ Again the hand went up to his mouth and again the cough shook him before exploding upwards. Stricken, he looked over to the young secretary, as though expecting him to rescue him. But Hans’s head was bowed. His grief for his master, whom he had also come to regard as a friend, was intense.

  ‘I’m afraid … He died. In Italy …’ The General broke off.

  Harriet stared not at him but straight ahead of her. As soon as she had received the message that the General wished to see her that morning, she had known in her inmost being that Philip was either dying or dead. But now that the death had been put into words it seemed even more dreadful.

  ‘How? How did it happen?’ She turned to Hans. ‘Hans – tell me.’

  The young man moved towards her. He realized, despite her outward composure, the extent of her shock, and he wanted to comfort her. But the social gulf between them precluded any physical contact – the taking of a hand, an arm around a shoulder, even an embrace – of the kind that he could have shown to any one of his friends or relatives in a similar situation. ‘He was k-killed, madame. M-murdered.’

  ‘Killed!’ She was astounded. Until then her scenario for his death had been totally different. He had looked so pallid and worn at his departure, he was still working so remorselessly. A man of his age who lived such a life of ceaseless action could all too easily succumb to an apoplexy or a heart-attack. ‘Where? How?’

  Hans glanced over to the General. He was hesitant to usurp the other man’s function as the bearer of the news. To do so might seem presumptuous of him.

  ‘The details are not yet fully known,’ the General muttered, looking down at his highly polished boots. ‘He left for a holiday in a village in Sicily,’ he continued in a louder voice. ‘He had a friend there, a German Baron. His – his name now escapes me. The Baron was not in his villa, he was away in Frankfurt – or was it Düsseldorf? No matter. No doubt you know him – or know of him.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of any German Baron friend of my husband’s. Why should he have chosen Sicily for a holiday with this – this German Baron?’ The corollary to that question was: Why didn’t he come back home as soon as his business was finished? She looked first at the General and then, when he remained silent, at Hans.

  Hans sighed. ‘He s-seemed to be exhausted. He needed a rest. There had been a lot of difficult n-negotiations, first with the Bank of Geneva, then in Rome with …’ He broke off. Why trouble her with all the details?

  ‘Why were you not with him?’ Her tone carried a hint of accusation.

  ‘I have an aunt in Florence. A w-widow. The master said that I could go and visit her. I offered to accompany him s-south but …’ He shrugged and rubbed with a forefinger at the stye. He swallowed. ‘He said that that wasn’t n-necessary.’

  ‘But why was he murdered? Why?’ She jumped to her feet as she put the question and crossed over to the window giving on to the garden. Her back was to them.

  ‘The police are not sure,’ the General answered, repeating what Hans had told him. ‘So far we have only the preliminary report from the consul in Palermo.’ Again the old man was racked by the barking cough. His wife had scolded him that it was madness to go out in such a cold, but he had an unyielding sense of duty. Philip had been a close friend, even if he had often made cruel fun of General’s pomposity and fussiness; the General and the Admiral had fought in the same campaigns. ‘He was alone in the villa. The two servants live somewhere else. It was during the night. It is all – nothing is clear at present. The police at first thought that the motive was theft but it seems that nothing was taken. He had a lot of money with him, the villa was full of valuable objects. Nothing touched.’

  The General fell silent. Hans looked at him, waiting for him to go on, and then, when the silence prolonged itself, he volunteered: ‘Perhaps there was a dreadful m-mistake. The Baron had lived there for many years, he may have made an enemy – or many enemies … In Sicily – you know how it is. Assassinations are c-common. It might have been a hired assassin who entered the house.’

  ‘At all events the police are still investigating,’ the General took up.

  ‘I see.’ Harriet turned to face them, still outwardly calm, and then went back to the sofa and sat down on it. She mused for a while. Then she said: ‘How am I to tell Alexine?’

  The General, though not in the least wanting the task, volunteered: ‘Would you prefer that I …?’

  ‘Oh, no. No! That’s something I must do.’

  Hans again rubbed at his inflamed eyelid. He could feel it throbbing, as he could feel his heart throbbing. Ever since he had heard the news, he had been wondering what would become of him now. No doubt he would find other work, perhaps even one of the two sons would take him on. But, he was convinced, he would never find an employer as b
rilliant, as resourceful or as kind as the man now dead. ‘I took the liberty, as I passed through Paris, of t-telegraphing your sons – step-sons,’ he amended. The telegraph between Paris and London had only recently been inaugurated. There was still none between any city of Italy and London. ‘ I imagine that one – or both – will arrive here soon.’

  Harriet nodded, hardly taking this in. She was thinking of Alexine.

  ‘I also have a c-codicil that he added to his will. He gave it to me in Rome when we said goodbye. Of course I have not broken the seal.’

  ‘Our lawyer can deal with that;’ she said abruptly. She was not in the least interested. When she had married Philip, the Admiral had secured a generous settlement. She had always assumed that the bulk of his fortune would go to the sons. That was only natural.

  ‘Well, thank God that’s over,’ the General said, as he settled himself in the coach. ‘ I’d rather lead a cavalry charge than go through that again.’ Since the survival of a dreaded ordeal always brings an exhilaration with it, all at once, previously so wan, the General perked up. He no longer coughed. Tapping his knee with his palm, he began to hum a Strauss waltz, as he looked out of the carriage window to survey the passing scene. His choice of that waltz was not fortuitous, though he did not realize that. On the last occasion when, at a Palace ball, he and Harriet had danced together, it had been to its cheeky, sexy lilt. He was one of the few men who thought her, even in middle age, to be attractive.

  ‘She t-took it well.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. As one would expect from someone of that family.’

  ‘Perhaps I should have stayed. Or at least have offered to stay.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, dear boy. Much better in such circumstances to leave people to their grief. Grief is a private thing,’ he added sententiously. ‘Unlike happiness, it is not something to be shared.’

  But Hans continued, throughout the rest of the silent journey back into the city, to brood. Perhaps the master would have wanted him to stay. Perhaps he had failed in a last duty to him.