Summer's Lease

by John Mortimer

  ‘I don’t think she was surprised by the police. I think she’d been expecting them for a long time.’

  ‘It was all explained to them.’

  ‘Nothing was explained, really.’

  ‘And anyway, what was all that about a letter?’

  ‘It came for Sandra Kettering.’

  ‘Then how do you know what was in it?’

  ‘I steamed it open.’

  The music started on a child’s roundabout in the square. Her two elder sisters took Jacqueline off to ride in a bright submarine. Haverford looked at his daughter. He was profoundly shocked.

  ‘You open other people’s letters?’

  ‘It’s necessary sometimes. To expose crime.’

  ‘My God, what have I done?’ Haverford was prepared to take at least part of the blame. ‘Spawned a member of M.I.5?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly who else is in the racket but I suspect Ken Corduroy, expert in patios and pool equipment. The Baronessa Dulcibene fits into it all somehow but I’m not quite sure where. I shall find out, of course. And Signor Fixit, he must have known what was going on…’

  ‘Just assuming for the sake of argument’ — Haverford fumbled in his pocket and found money to buy another refill for his paper cup — ‘that there is the slightest truth in all this. What, for heaven’s sake’ — and here Haverford saw his reblossoming friendship with Nancy Leadbetter withering on the bough — ‘are you going to do about it?’

  ‘It’s you that’s got the column in the paper.’

  ‘Then what are you asking me to do to poor old Nancy?’

  ‘Expose her.’

  ‘I did that once on the floor of the very room we were sitting in, about thirty years ago.’

  ‘I should have known it was hopeless trying to interest you in anything that wasn’t to do with sex.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ Haverford looked at his daughter for a long time, smiling, as though she had paid him a compliment. She looked back with blue eyes which were like his, but clearer and less merciful.

  ‘You’re a puritan, Molly Coddle,’ he said, ‘such a puritan.’

  ‘Because I object to being cheated?’

  ‘Everyone has to be cheated in this life, from time to time. Otherwise you’ll never get any fun. Every time you take on a new girl you have to bargain for being conned in the end, lied to, robbed a little and finally dumped. On the whole the good times make it worth while. How will you ever enjoy a dinner if you spend the entire meal wondering if you’re going to be charged twice for vegetables?’

  She had heard this before and now lost patience with it. ‘You make absolutely no distinction between good and evil!’

  ‘The denial of pleasure is evil. Coming between an old man and his last chance of happiness is clearly evil.’ The group were playing, ‘Bimini, Rimini’ again, inappropriate music when Haverford should have been accompanied by the sighing of violins. ‘You don’t think I’ve got any hope of ending my days in the Villa Baderini if either of us calls Nancy a criminal?’

  ‘She’s exploiting all of us. I thought you called yourself a Socialist.’

  ‘But you don’t! You believe in entrepreneurial initiative and the free market economy. Even if, and it’s a simply enormous “if” because most of what you say seems to be pure guesswork, but suppose there’s a grain of truth in it, what have Arnold and Nancy done but take advantage of the laws of supply and demand?’

  ‘You mean they can cut off the supply and then make their demands.’ He smiled at that: his daughter, he thought, sometimes showed a glimmer of his talent for constructing a sentence.

  ‘Of course I’m a Socialist,’ he told her, ‘but until we’ve got the red flag flying, Molly Coddle, we have to live with the rat race.’

  ‘You’re obviously quite used to living with the rats.’ She got up then, and looking at him it seemed to her that he had suddenly shrunk, so that his shirt and suit were several sizes too big for him.

  ‘Molly Coddle! Remember my age, won’t you? Don’t you want to see me settled?’ He called after her, but she went on walking away from him in the direction of the children’s roundabout, where Henrietta and Samantha were in conversation with two Italian boys, and as she approached she saw the Baronessa with Jacqueline reaching up trustingly to hold her wrinkled, beringed hand.

  ‘Time for bed.’ ‘Oh, can’t we stay a little longer, honestly?’ ‘Come on, we’re never allowed to do anything.’ ‘I will drive them home to you safely: you can rely on me.’ The Baronessa was looking grey-haired and dependable. ‘I am, after all, four times a grandmother.’ In the end Molly took Jacqueline and left the other children to be brought home by Vittoria Dulcibene. After she had finished with her father she didn’t want to spoil anyone else’s pleasure in that evening.

  Dear old Nancy, old thing,

  [Haverford sat up in his bedroom writing after the Baronessa had brought Henrietta and Samantha home and the house was deeply silent.]

  No one’s perfect and perhaps you and I are less perfect than most people. I have to confess that I haven’t been much of a success, either as a husband or as a father. My daughter, who I hoped would grow up like you, understanding the weaknesses of mankind, has turned out to be a puritan. Of my first marriage, little need be said except that I seem to have spent the long years it lasted apologizing for everything from my jokes, my political and artistic beliefs, to some occasional forgetfulness about the condition of my flies. It is strange how often I left them half open when I consider how infrequently my late wife called upon my undoubted talents in that direction. I have, I’m ashamed to say, written stuff that was unworthy of my talents (I cannot think of some unsigned articles on ‘Great Men of Letters’ I wrote for Kiddie’s Encyclopaedia without blushing. My piece on the divine Oscar, for instance, mostly hinted that he fell foul of the law in some obscure way at the end of his life, perhaps for non-payment of rates). How impossibly boring we should all be if we had nothing to look back on but a life of unbroken honesty. Many of my best ‘Jottings’ have been con tricks, worthy, perhaps, of your beloved Arnold at his most inspired.

  Speaking of Arnold, I would like you to know that I entirely understand and indeed respect the position in which he left you. Property may be theft, perhaps old Proudhon was right, but there is so much else that makes the world go round. Every time we make love we may be stealing someone’s affections and one can’t keep alive without purloining the hen’s eggs or slices of the cow’s rump. Even Will Shakespeare pinched his plots from Plutarch and Holinshed, and who can say how many of my ‘Jottings’, praised for their originality, may not have been acquired by stealth from Oscar, or G. K. Chesterton, or even, and I confess this to my shame, from the other chap, name now forgotten, who writes in the Sunday paper. All this is to assure you, Nancy, that there is no risk of me being a puritan on the subject of property, or, come to that, on the subject of theft.

  Now I know, perhaps the world knows, that dear old Arnold had to cut a few corners when building up his property empire. How else can a fellow start off with nothing but a demob suit and end up with some of the best Braques and Picassos in private hands?

  I am quite prepared to turn a blind eye on Arnold’s activities in view of his magnificent contribution to the Arts. After all, Michelangelo was wise enough not to ask the Pope exactly how he came by every penny needed for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And as it was with property, so it may well have been with water. Who am I to complain? Particularly as I’m sure dear old Arnold would have liked some of the profits of that enterprise too to be spent on the Arts, for instance, in allowing an old master of English prose the time to polish off the few remaining ‘Jottings’ he may have tucked away inside of him.

  I hope by now, my dear old thing, you will have got the drift of this letter. My daughter Molly has suggested I devote one of my ‘Jottings’ to the mysterious arrival and disappearance of water in Tuscan holiday homes. I shall not do so. I am quite sure that she wouldn’t indulge i
n any such exposure herself if she knew that it would hurt one of the family. Of course I have looked on you as a dear member of my family for years but why don’t we, as they say, make it legal? Some, as William Butler Yeats wrote, ‘loved the pilgrim soul in you’. Others may love the beauty of your house and the rich hospitality of your surroundings. Speaking for myself, I love it all, so what do you say, old thing? Shall we give it a whirl? I await your reply in breathless anticipation.

  Yours till the Chianti runs out,

  Haverford

  He was pleased with this communication, which seemed to him to convey its message clearly without being painfully explicit. He put it in an envelope and decided to ask Don Marco to take him round to deliver it in the morning. Then he climbed into bed and thought of waking up in one of the huge four-posters in the Villa Baderini as the Tuscan sunrise slowly lit up a long, almond-eyed Modigliani nude on the wall. Later, he fell into a deep, innocent and dreamless sleep.

  Molly woke at four. Half a moon shed a white light on the world outside the bedroom window and a mosquito, whining, failed to wake up Hugh. It’s time, she told herself, to get your thoughts in order.

  She was convinced that she had been right about the water shortage; but, even as she explained it to her father, it seemed trivial and only a small part of the mystery which, she liked to think, surrounded the Ketterings and ‘La Felicità’. Her methodical mind began to list things still unexplained: who had left suddenly on their arrival; what did the list in the Piero della Francesca book mean, and who had taken it; why and in what circumstances did Signor Fixit die: and was Buck Kettering in fact lost and gone forever? He had been in Siena on the day the water ran out and nobody, not even his child, seemed to have seen him since. She thought of all she now knew about Buck. He was tough, a hard man who collected rents and probably evicted tenants for Arnold Leadbetter, with enough charm to get on in the Leadbetter empire and enough of a soul to become obsessed with the paintings she loved the most. In Italy he must have deliberately changed and taken on a new personality. The old Buck, who took his name from a terrace of houses, whom she could imagine out with the boys boasting of his business and sexual triumphs over a round of whiskies in some Mayfair bar near to the Leadbetter office, had vanished and given way to the more aloof, cultured and knowledgeable padrone of ‘La Felicità’. All the old Kettering had been hidden away like the love stories and thrillers in the attic. What remained was the man whose books and furniture were in such impeccable taste, who wished to organize the lives of his tenants so they should fit in exactly with what he felt to be the pure spirit of his place. None of the young rent collectors he had laughed with, she thought, would be invited to candlelit dinners on the terrace as the sad strains of Turandot cried out into the Tuscan night. The voice of the new Buck, she was convinced, was to be heard in the letters, firmly, aloofly, but with an occasional half smile and a flicker of irony, setting out the rules of the house. They were Buck’s letters, although Sandra might have put her initial on them. But she no sooner admitted that to herself than she thought why? Why had he withdrawn and let Sandra send the letters; why had he let her run the business and conduct the dubious relations with the Water Board when he, as Arnold’s right-hand man, must have known every detail of such dealings? How on earth was it, she thought, that Sandra Kettering had succeeded in obliterating all traces of her husband?

  Half an hour before Molly had been in a deep sleep. Now, she was lying wide-eyed and alert. She heard, as she had once before, the sound of someone moving quietly and continuously in the house. The door that opened slowly, the footstep which lingered on one stair before daring another move were unmistakable. Her awareness communicated itself to her husband and he woke up. ‘What’s the matter. Can’t you sleep?’

  ‘I can hear something,’ Molly whispered.

  ‘What sort of a something?’ Hugh whispered back.

  ‘Somebody downstairs.’ There was a small but audible scraping sound, furniture being moved, perhaps, across a stone floor.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ Hugh whispered hopefully.

  ‘There is somebody.’

  ‘Do you want me to go and look?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right, then.’ He turned his back, pulling the bedclothes round his shoulders.

  ‘You don’t want to go, do you?’

  ‘Considering there’s nobody, it seems unnecessary.’

  She heard another sound, a drawer shutting perhaps, or a cupboard. ‘I’m going.’

  ‘Do you really want me to come?’ But as she had gone he settled back to sleep and left her to it.

  The sounds came from below them, so she went down the stone staircase as quietly as she could manage and stood facing the door of the big drawing-room. She looked at it a long time because there was a strip of light at the foot of the grey double doors; whoever their visitor might be, he was making himself thoroughly at home. Then she stepped forward and turned the handle as quietly as any intruder might have done.

  There was only one light in the room, and that was on a writing-table at the end nearest the door. A slim figure in jeans, with blonde hair, was standing with its back to Molly, going through an odd collection of bits of paper from the drawer which had been pulled out and set on the table. Before she discovered who it was Molly became aware of other shapes, inert figures in sleeping-bags or covered in blankets, in pairs or alone. They lay along the floor or on the raised platform with the piano at the other end. There may have been seven or eight shapes in all, dossed down like casualties in a hastily converted hospital behind the lines. In the quietness of the night the army of young people had billeted themselves on Molly.

  Then the girl at the writing-table turned and she saw that it was Chrissie Kettering. Molly stepped forward to greet her as warmly as though she had been one of her own children.

  Third Week

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘We knew that if we asked you wouldn’t let them come’ was how Henrietta explained it.

  She and Samantha had come on as the advance party, driven home by the Baronessa. Before they went to bed they had unlocked the front door, leaving the citadel of ‘La Felicità’ defenceless. The invaders had stayed dancing in the square and come later on bulging out of a Fiat. They had let themselves in and spread out on the floor for the night because they had gone off Nancy Leadbetter’s where the servants were ‘really unfriendly’. Samantha and Henrietta had been proud to offer them hospitality. ‘You’re not going to turn them away, are you?’

  No, it seemed that Molly wasn’t going to turn them away. She remembered, with some pleasure, the exchange between herself and Hugh when she had come back to bed. ‘No one there?’ he’d asked. ‘Only about eight people in sleeping-bags, all over the floor of the big drawing-room.’ ‘Well, that’s all right then.’ He was relieved that things between them had so far lightened that she could make a joke and went back to sleep.

  Now some of the liveliest of the young people were at breakfast on the terrace, spooning up melon, tearing off chunks of hard bread to smother with Oxford marmalade. Two of them were closeted, it seemed for eternity, in the bathroom; others were still asleep on the floor downstairs. Giovanna went around the house with her broom, clucking and hissing with disapproval as though she wanted nothing so much as to be able to sweep all the new arrivals into the black plastic bags which she drove in, after her work each day, to be tipped on to the communal rubbish dump in Mondano. Haverford kept out of their way, knowing that, as an old man, he was likely to be ignored and Hugh, whose muttered protests at the turn of events had been ignored by his wife, went out to the pool with Jacqueline. There he was disturbed to find a sixteen-year-old Italian girl lying on her back, her hairy armpits exposed, and her bare nipples pointing at the cloudless sky. He gave her a tentative and ignored ‘buon giorno’, then concentrated on teaching Jacqueline to swim. Only Molly fussed around the visitors, pouring out coffee and offering them peaches.

  �
��It must be very hard to keep away from your house,’ she said understandingly to Chrissie Kettering.

  ‘It’s kind of you to have us. Henrietta said you wouldn’t mind at all. Oh, and by the way, I brought you some nougat.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you. How long did you plan to stay?’ Molly was determined to sound friendly but she did wonder.

  ‘Not long, I think. Some people are going to take off for Dubrovnik tomorrow, by train.’

  Molly wondered at this child’s capacity for adventure. At the age of forty, renting a villa in Chiantishire seemed a sufficient challenge.

  ‘Which of you exactly?’

  ‘All of us meant to but some of us have lost our passports.’

  ‘So they won’t go?’

  ‘Oh yes’ — Chrissie spoke with the confidence of youth — ‘we’ll all get there.’

  ‘What were you looking for last night?’ Molly had decided it was time to ask the question.

  ‘Looking for?’ Chrissie’s large brown eyes seemed entirely innocent.

  ‘Yes. In the table drawer. I thought you were looking for something.’

  ‘Oh, in there,’ the girl suddenly remembered. ‘My reading-list for the holidays. Miles and miles of Jane Austen and D. H. Lawrence. And the dates for next term. I think they must have got sent here. Mama’s forgetful about things sometimes.’ I’m sure your Mama, Molly thought to herself, never forgets anything. She asked, ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘No luck. It’s very annoying.’ It must be, Molly thought, particularly if what you were sent to find was a letter signed ‘Claudio’.

  ‘Well, if they turn up, we’ll let you know. Not, I suppose, that you’re going to read much Jane Austen on the train ride to Dubrovnik.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Pargeter.’ She had excellent manners, covering a toughness of character and the aloof, faintly superior smile which might have been taught her by her father. Chrissie might also grow into someone who could combine rent-collecting in the East End of London with knowing all about Piero della Francesca.