The Prince, who apparently remembered the dramatic outcome of Haverford’s last visit, said, ‘Shall you be staying long?’
‘Just possibly,’ Haverford told him, ‘the rest of my life.’ Conscious of having, in his resentment at the presence of another guest, rather overstated his position, he retreated to the window and looked out at the rain pounding down on the old garden and the modern sculpture. ‘I mean that I would like to stay here and complete my life’s work, a tribute to the Socialism of Oscar Wilde.’
‘Oscar Wilde?’ The Prince’s small head was pushed forward and quivering; his tortoise eyes blinked in alarm. ‘You knew Oscar Wilde?’
‘Well, scarcely. I was born about ten years after the divine Oscar went out to dine in Paradise. I suppose’ — he looked at the ancient Prince who was gripping Country Life as though it were a link to the world of sanity — ‘you and the great man might have overlapped. Just.’
‘You say he was divine?’
‘Can you think of anyone in history you would rather have join us at the dinner table tonight?’
‘Oscar Wilde!’ The Prince whispered, as though he had just noticed, dangling over his head, a particularly large and uncommon spider. ‘Omosessuale!’
‘Well, yes.’ Haverford plunged himself on the sofa beside the other guest, stretched out his legs and took a swig of his gin and tonic. ‘I think he’s been out of the closet for about ninety years. Like Michelangelo, Walt Whitman, Proust and Verlaine. You’re not going to hold that against Oscar? He wanted to bring beauty to every class of society. He was one of nature’s Socialists.’
‘Omosessuale,’ the Prince repeated in an even more sibilant whisper. He clearly didn’t regard whatever sort of Socialism Oscar Wilde may have professed as any mitigation. To his amusement Haverford saw the old Prince press himself even more closely against the arm of the sofa as though to put the greatest possible distance between himself and the highly perfumed old writer. ‘And who is Whitman?’ Tosti asked, as though the poet were some particularly undesirable guest Nancy Leadbetter might have asked to dinner.
‘All writers’ — Haverford sounded extremely reasonable — ‘must have a pronounced feminine side to their natures. I myself have always been drawn to woman as the insolent urchin, the daring little tomboy. Of course, I’m also deeply appreciative of the more voluptuous charms of our hostess tonight.’
‘You are omosessuale?’ The cracked voice was hardly audible. Before Haverford could further clarify the situation, however, the great doors swung open and, to the Prince’s obvious relief, Nancy was among them.
Molly was glad to be back. ‘La Felicità’, on that evening of the storm, had never felt more like her loved and natural home, nor had it, even when they first arrived and found it so miraculously well-stocked with fruit and groceries, provided so warm a welcome. Her journey back with the Tapscotts was largely silent. They had used up all of their conversation on the way out, so she was glad to leave them (‘We might have had a bit of a chance if that bloke Raphael hadn’t done it all so blooming well, Mrs Pargeter’) and squelch through the rain to the front door. And as she climbed up the stone staircase and met her family the house seemed to live entirely up to its name. She even heard a sound which had been absent from their lives for a long time. Hugh was singing. It was a number which had been popular when they first met. She wondered as she climbed the stairs if it had been her absence which had brought about such unusual happiness.
She stood at the kitchen doorway and saw them all engrossed in piling wood, collected from the garden and the neighbouring scrub on to the fireplace. For a moment they didn’t notice her. Then Jacqueline saw her and ran towards her. She picked her youngest child up to hug her and the others turned to bombard her with information. They were going to use the grill for the first time. They had bought enormous steaks in Mondano and they were having baked potatoes. Gamps was off with his girlfriend and it would be just them. Jacqueline could stay up, couldn’t she? The storm had been tremendously exciting. At one point in the afternoon, all the sky at the back of the house had been white with lightning. Only Hugh stood silent by the fireplace, looking at her as though he had never seen her before.
He had thought of her while she had been away as the Molly he knew all too well; the big, untidy woman with fair, untidy hair, given to uncontrollable flushes. She was a woman who seemed seldom relaxed, who lurched at life, screwing herself up for a series of attacks only some of which were successful and many of which were inspired by panic. She was a wife who caused him guilt and had not, for a long time now, brought him pleasure. The fact that she had received no pleasure from him hadn’t made him feel less inadequate. But now as he looked at her she seemed to be a different person entirely. The rain had flattened her fair hair and her cotton dress was wet, clinging to her like a dress in a painting. Her size, so calmly and contentedly was she standing with her youngest child in her arms, made her seem not clumsy but beautiful. The smile on her face was one of fulfilment. He felt something he hadn’t experienced for so long he barely recognized it. He desired his wife.
‘What would you like?’ He moved towards the cold white wine, open on the table.
‘I think I’d like a swim.’
‘Of course you would.’
Molly swam up and down the pool ten times as the rain splashed around her, the thunder still rumbled in the distance and there was an occasional lightning flash. Each length she swam made her feel more contented.
At dinner Haverford seemed unable to keep off the subject which made Prince Tosti most nervous.
‘All artists need a patron,’ he told Nancy as he helped himself liberally to wine. ‘Patronage is as old as art itself. Even Shakespeare.’
‘Shakespeare?’ the Prince repeated fearfully.
‘What would Shakespeare have been without the kind hospitality provided by his long-time boyfriend, the Earl of Southampton?’
‘Omosessuale,’ the old man whispered in despair, looking up at a corner of the painted ceiling.
‘Patronage is not a favour conferred on a genius, it is his birthright. Where would Tchaikovsky have been without the Von Meek woman?’
‘Tchaikovsky.’ Tosti Castelnuovo could be seen to wince.
‘Or Haydn without Prince Esterhazy?’
‘Omo — ’ Tosti began fearfully, but Haverford cheerfully set his mind at rest. ‘Not to worry. I’ve never heard it suggested that old papa Haydn was a poofter!’
‘Where’s your daughter tonight?’ Nancy was getting tired of this discussion of people she had never met.
‘At home, I think. She’s been to Urbino.’
‘She has?’ Nancy put her hand over her glass to stop her servant pouring wine and became attentive. ‘Why Urbino?’
‘To see the pictures.’
‘Oh. Is that all?’
‘After all, he was one of the world’s greatest patrons.’
Nancy frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘The old soldier of fortune.’
‘Who your daughter went to see?’
‘I am speaking, my darling dear, of Duke Federico di Montefeltro, who built his palace at Urbino to give support and comfort to Raphael and Piero della Francesca. Just as Nancy Leadbetter gives her hospitality to Haverford Downs, the Master of the Jotting.’ Haverford was smiling at his hostess but he didn’t appear to be joking.
When they went to the drawing-room for coffee Haverford hoped the old Prince would soon deprive them of his company but he stuck like a limpet to his refuge at the end of the sofa. At last Nancy yawned, got up and went to the door. Haverford followed her and whispered, ‘I’m coming too.’
‘Not now.’ She put a hand on his arm, as he thought, affectionately. ‘We mustn’t upset Tosti.’
Why ever not? Haverford thought that he didn’t mind if Tosti was reduced to a state of senile lunacy by the great love affair that was about to be renewed. However he nodded tactfully, whispered ‘I know the way’ to the figure of the retreatin
g Nancy and went and sat opposite the other guest, discoursing eloquently on the divine Oscar’s particular brand of Socialism which would free us all from the sordid necessity of living for others. The old Prince stared at him with growing panic until Haverford felt that it was his turn to yawn and go up to his bedroom.
‘About that postcard…’
‘For heaven’s sake, what does that matter?’
The bedroom roof at ‘La Felicità’ had sprung unexpected leaks, water dripped regularly into a bucket on the stone floor. In a corner it sounded a high, more frequent note in a tin bowl. Molly found this was exciting, as though they were camping out.
She said, ‘People have more serious things to worry about, I suppose, than postcards.’
‘I felt you’d been away for a long time. Not just last night, but as though you’d taken this whole holiday on your own. I must say’ — he was undressing carefully, avoiding the drips — ‘I’ve felt a bit left out.’
‘Have you? I’ve been so busy. It’s all over now.’
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at her. She was standing in front of the long speckled mirror, an arm raised to brush her hair. He was unusually moved again by her beauty, the placid and fulfilled look of one of the Three Graces, an appearance she seemed to have discovered so recently.
He asked her, as he never did at home, ‘Have you been happy?’
‘I don’t know about that. But not bored, not ever bored. I’ve loved the house, you know. And I’ve found out about a lot of things we never seem to meet at home.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Lost souls. I suppose you could call them that,’ she said in a quiet, matter of fact way, as though they were discussing plans for their journey back.
‘You mean you found that in the pictures you saw?’
‘Oh yes. In those too.’
That night they made love with an absorbed intensity they had never experienced before, even when their children were conceived.
Alone in his bedroom at the Villa Baderini, Haverford let an hour pass, and then a little longer, to be sure that the whole household was at rest. Then he went to the bathroom, renewed the fading cologne on his scalp and slapped his pink cheeks with after-shave. He found a tin of talcum powder, Pour les Hommes, and dusted himself liberally. To get himself into the right mood he thought steadfastly of certain young female page-boys and fearless tomboys he had known well. Then he tightened his dressing-gown cord, switched out his light and tiptoed out into the corridor. He turned right and went to what he thought was its extremity, before gently turning a handle and pushing open a door.
The room he entered seemed larger, grander even than his own. In the darkness he could just make out the swagged curtains of a huge four-poster bed and hear light and regular breathing. Haverford undid his dressing-gown, slipped it off and dropped it on to the floor. He advanced until his knees were touching the side of the bed and then he said, as clearly and as lovingly as possible, ‘My dear darling. Shall we go on exactly where we left off?’ He pulled back the covers and did his best to hop into bed. Then a light was switched on and he found himself staring into the terrified eyes of Prince Tosti Castelnuovo, who sat bolt upright with his old hands clutching a blanket about him. The sleeping villa was awoken with a scream of terror, as though the Prince had just seen the largest and most malignant spider in the world.
The Return
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The next day the sun returned, but it was a weaker sun with much of its feverish heat lost in a blue sky flecked with clouds. The wind still stirred the olive trees, exposing the silvery underside of their leaves, and shook the cypresses a little. The extremes of August were over and it was September weather, time to begin to think of returning to the cities, the end of school holidays, when Chiantishire was left to the Italians and those Brits who would spend the winter drinking, quarrelling, grumbling at the inadequate central heating and sometimes emerging with the sunshine to say, ‘It makes it all worth while, being able to lunch out in December.’ The richer Italians began to trickle back to their radiators and fur coats and games of bridge in apartments in Florence or Milan.
But on her last day in ‘La Felicità’, Molly found it still warm enough to sit out in her nightdress on the terrace at breakfast-time. In the house Giovanna ironed the final wash and the children began the interesting process of packing their suitcases, which they calculated would take them the entire day. Molly watched as Don Marco’s little car came clattering down the track and her father got out of it carrying his suitcase. She watched an inaudible parting between Haverford and the priest, with many handshakes, smiles and promises. Then her father joined her on the terrace.
‘Would it be too much,’ he asked as he sat down, his voice full of suffering, ‘to ask for a small cup of coffee and perhaps a roll?’
As she served him breakfast Molly asked, ‘How’s the wedding?’
‘You heard about that?’ Haverford gave the small, brave smile of a man who had told himself he could meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.
‘The priest told me. By the way, when did you become a Catholic?’
‘Lapsed. I became a lapsed Catholic.’ And he had to admit, ‘One man in his time plays many parts. I somehow fancied the idea of a church wedding in Mondano, perfectly possible as I’m a widower. All that was yesterday. Things move rapidly in this part of the world.’
‘Whatever happened?’ She sat down beside him. He buttered a roll and added marmalade, bit into it as though it were the last square meal he expected to receive.
‘Nancy sent me home without breakfast this morning. She said I’d better get back to you, Molly Coddle. She seemed to think I needed constant supervision.’
‘Whatever’ — Molly didn’t seem unduly put out — ‘did you do this time?’
‘I lost my way.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
‘I lost my way and strayed into the wrong bedroom.’ Haverford couldn’t suppress the beginning of a chuckle. ‘I tried to tuck up with that aristocratic old fart who’s scared to death of poofs and spiders, to neither of which breed do I happen to belong. I gave him, I’m delighted to say, the shock of his declining years.’
‘How did Nancy come into it?’
‘Because of the screams.’
‘Whose screams?’
‘Old Prince Anti-Pooferini’s. He wailed like a banshee and she rushed on stage and calmed him down, mopped his brow and poured acqua minerale down his old gizzard. Then she announced that they were getting married.’
Her father looked at her with watery blue eyes and crumbs down the front of his shirt. Against all her better instincts, and despite the fact that he smelt of stale eau-de-Cologne, she felt sorry for him.
‘She said Arnold had always called her his Princess and now she was going to be one in real life. She’s selling up round here and moving to Milan. He’s got a town house there and a villa on Lake Como. It seems she’s given up the water business, so I couldn’t really put the screws on her.’
‘The water business…’ Molly seemed to be remembering the distant past. ‘That was never important.’
‘You thought it was once.’
‘When I first found out about it.’
‘Took a high moral tone with me, from what I remember.’
‘There’s no point in doing that with you.’
‘I’m so glad you understand that at last.’ Haverford looked at his daughter as though there was a possibility they might be friends. ‘I’d hoped Nancy would be my patron. I could have done my book. I’ve always wanted to be between hard covers. Anyway, I always felt at my best in palaces. If you’re not going to marry me, I told her, at least you could keep me as a sort of writer in residence.’
‘What did she say to that?’
‘She said I’d nearly given her precious Prince Tosti a heart-attack. Neither of them wanted to see me in the house at breakfast. Somewhere aro
und dawn I rang Don Marco and he brought me back to you.’
‘I see.’ She drank her coffee. Jacqueline came out of the house and clambered on to her grandfather’s knee, pleased to see him home.
‘Poor old Molly Coddle. You’re stuck with me for ever.’
‘I always thought I would be.’
‘Well, one thing’s absolutely for sure.’ Haverford seemed to cheer up. ‘She’s not going to get much of a rogering from that geriatric. And he flattered himself that I fancied him! The world, I tell you, Molly Coddle, is full of self-deceivers.’
After breakfast Hugh and Molly drove into Mondano together. He got the car filled up for their journey to Pisa airport the next morning and she went into Lucca’s shop to buy the lunch. As the shopkeeper found her parmesan cheese and ravioli, she remembered Fosdyke, lost and gone forever, who had taken some pride in showing her where to get Oxford marmalade.
‘Mrs Pargeter. I believe you’re leaving us?’ She turned round and found herself looking into the grey, slightly mocking eyes of the Baronessa Dulcibene.
‘I’m afraid so. Back to London tomorrow.’
‘And your trip to Urbino. Was that worth the detour?’
‘I think so.’
‘I’m so glad that it turned out to be a success. The dear old Tapscotts told us exactly where you went.’
Molly looked at the amused woman who was dressed so elegantly for shopping in Mondano. Suddenly, she wondered about the Tapscotts. Had they been only too anxious to take her wherever she wanted to go? Perhaps it didn’t matter any longer.
‘He has left me at last, the terrible Manrico.’
‘The dog?’
‘Oh, yes. Last night. He bit through his chain and he must have run off somewhere. To you perhaps?’
‘No.’ Molly shook her head. ‘He didn’t come to us. I remember I never heard him barking.’
‘Quite honestly, Mrs Pargeter, we are extremely glad to see the back of him.’
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