“Quite. Have you?”
Mrs Fisher paused before replying. Was this a habit, this trick of answering a simple question with the same question? If so, it must be curbed, for no one could live four weeks in any real comfort with somebody who had a habit.
She glanced at Mrs Arbuthnot, and her parted hair and gentle brow reassured her. No: it was accident, not habit, that had produced those echoes. She could as soon imagine a dove having tiresome habits as Mrs Arbuthnot. Considering her, she thought what a splendid wife she would have been for poor Carlyle. So much better than that horrid, clever Jane. She would have soothed him.
“Then shall we go?” she suggested.
“Let me help you up,” said Mrs Arbuthnot, all consideration.
“Oh, thank you – I can manage perfectly. It’s only sometimes that my stick prevents me.”
Mrs Fisher got up quite easily – Mrs Arbuthnot had hovered over her for nothing.
“I’m going to have one of these gorgeous oranges,” said Mrs Wilkins, staying where she was and reaching across to a black bowl piled with them. “Rose, how can you resist them? Look – have this one. Do have this beauty…” And she held out a big one.
“No, I’m going to see to my duties,” said Mrs Arbuthnot, moving towards the door. “You’ll forgive me for leaving you, won’t you,” she added politely to Mrs Fisher.
Mrs Fisher moved towards the door too, quite easily, almost quickly – her stick did not hinder her at all. She had no intention of being left with Mrs Wilkins.
“What time would you like to have lunch?” Mrs Arbuthnot asked her, trying to keep her head as at least a non-guest, if not precisely a hostess, above water.
“Lunch,” said Mrs Fisher, “is at half-past twelve.”
“You shall have it at half-past twelve then,” said Mrs Arbuthnot. “I’ll tell the cook. It will be a great struggle,” she continued, smiling, “but I’ve brought a little dictionary…”
“The cook,” said Mrs Fisher, “knows.”
“Oh?” said Mrs Arbuthnot.
“Lady Caroline has already told her,” said Mrs Fisher.
“Oh?” said Mrs Arbuthnot again.
“Yes. Lady Caroline speaks the kind of Italian cooks understand. I am prevented going into the kitchen because of my stick. And even if I were able to go, I fear I shouldn’t be understood.”
“But—” began Mrs Arbuthnot.
“But it’s too wonderful,” Mrs Wilkins finished for her from the table, delighted with these unexpected simplifications in her and Rose’s lives. “Why, we’ve got positively nothing to do here, either of us, except just be happy. You wouldn’t believe,” she said, turning her head and speaking straight to Mrs Fisher, portions of orange in either hand, “how terribly good Rose and I have been for years without stopping, and how much now we need a perfect rest.”
And Mrs Fisher, going without answering her out of the room, said to herself, “She must – she shall be curbed.”
8
Presently, when Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot, unhampered by any duties, wandered out and down the worn stone steps and under the pergola into the lower garden, Mrs Wilkins said to Mrs Arbuthnot, who seemed pensive, “Don’t you see that, if somebody else does the ordering, it frees us?”
Mrs Arbuthnot said she did see, but nevertheless she thought it rather silly to have everything taken out of their hands.
“I love things to be taken out of my hands,” said Mrs Wilkins.
“But we found San Salvatore,” said Mrs Arbuthnot, “and it is rather silly that Mrs Fisher should behave as if it belonged only to her.”
“What is rather silly,” said Mrs Wilkins with much serenity, “is to mind. I can’t see the least point in being in authority at the price of one’s liberty.”
Mrs Arbuthnot said nothing to that for two reasons – first, because she was struck by the remarkable and growing calm of the hitherto incoherent and excited Lotty, and secondly because what she was looking at was so very beautiful.
All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face. It was wisteria. Wisteria and sunshine… she remembered the advertisement. Here indeed were both in profusion. The wisteria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering, and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour. The ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea, each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on trellises, and fig trees, and peach trees, and cherry trees. The cherry trees and peach trees were in blossom – lovely showers of white and deep rose-colour among the trembling delicacy of the olives – the fig leaves were just big enough to smell of figs, the vine buds were only beginning to show. And beneath these trees were groups of blue and purple irises, and bushes of lavender, and grey, sharp cactuses, and the grass was thick with dandelions and daisies, and right down at the bottom was the sea. Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere: every sort of colour, piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers – the periwinkles looked exactly as if they were being poured down each side of the steps – and flowers that grow only in borders in England, proud flowers keeping themselves to themselves over there, such as the great blue irises and the lavender, were being jostled by small, shining common things like dandelions and daisies and the white bells of the wild onion, and only seemed the better and the more exuberant for it.
They stood looking at this crowd of loveliness, this happy jumble, in silence. No, it didn’t matter what Mrs Fisher did – not here, not in such beauty. Mrs Arbuthnot’s discomposure melted out of her. In the warmth and light of what she was looking at, of what to her was a manifestation, an entirely new side, of God, how could one be discomposed? If only Frederick were with her, seeing it too, seeing as he would have seen it when first they were lovers, in the days when he saw what she saw and loved what she loved…
She sighed.
“You mustn’t sigh in heaven,” said Mrs Wilkins. “One doesn’t.”
“I was thinking how one longs to share this with those one loves,” said Mrs Arbuthnot.
“You mustn’t long in heaven,” said Mrs Wilkins. “You’re supposed to be quite complete there. And it is heaven, isn’t it, Rose? See how everything has been set in together – the dandelions and the irises, the vulgar and the superior, me and Mrs Fisher – all welcome, all mixed up anyhow, and all so visibly happy and enjoying ourselves.”
“Mrs Fisher doesn’t seem happy – not visibly, anyhow,” said Mrs Arbuthnot, smiling.
“She’ll begin soon, you’ll see.”
Mrs Arbuthnot said she didn’t believe that after a certain age people began anything.
Mrs Wilkins said she was sure no one, however old and tough, could resist the effects of perfect beauty. Before many days, perhaps only hours, they would see Mrs Fisher bursting out into every kind of exuberance. “I’m quite sure,” said Mrs Wilkins, “that we’ve got to heaven, and once Mrs Fisher realizes that that’s where she is, she’s bound to be different. You’ll see. She’ll leave off being ossified, and go all soft and able to stretch, and we shall get quite – why, I shouldn’t be surprised if we get quite fond of her.”
The idea of Mrs Fisher bursting out into anything – she who seemed so particularly firmly fixed inside her buttons – made Mrs Arbuthnot laugh. She condoned Lotty’s loose way of talking of heaven, because in such a place, on such a morning, condonation was in the very air. Besides, what an excuse there was.
And Lady Caroline, sitting where they had left her before breakfast on the wall, peeped over when she heard laughter, and saw them standing on the path below, and thou
ght what a mercy it was they were laughing down there and had not come up and done it round her. She disliked jokes at all times, but in the morning she hated them – especially close up, especially crowding in her ears. She hoped the originals were on their way out for a walk, and not on their way back from one. They were laughing more and more. What could they possibly find to laugh at?
She looked down on the tops of their heads with a very serious face, for the thought of spending a month with laughers was a grave one, and they, as though they felt her eyes, turned suddenly and looked up.
The dreadful geniality of those women…
She shrank away from their smiles and wavings, but she could not shrink out of sight without falling into the lilies. She neither smiled nor waved back, and turning her eyes to the more distant mountains surveyed them carefully till the two, tired of waving, moved away along the path and turned the corner and disappeared.
This time they both did notice that they had been met with, at least, unresponsiveness.
“If we weren’t in heaven,” said Mrs Wilkins serenely, “I should say we had been snubbed, but as nobody snubs anybody there, of course we can’t have been.”
“Perhaps she is unhappy,” said Mrs Arbuthnot.
“Whatever it is she is she’ll get over it here,” said Mrs Wilkins, with conviction.
“We must try and help her,” said Mrs Arbuthnot.
“Oh, but nobody helps anybody in heaven. That’s finished with. You don’t try to be, or do. You simply are.”
Well, Mrs Arbuthnot wouldn’t go into that – not here, not today. The vicar, she knew, would have called Lotty’s talk levity, if not profanity. How old he seemed from here – an old, old vicar.
They left the path and clambered down the olive terraces, down and down, to where at the bottom the warm, sleepy sea heaved gently among the rocks. There a pine tree grew close to the water, and they sat under it, and a few yards away was a fishing boat lying motionless and green-bellied on the water. The ripples of the sea made little gurgling noises at their feet. They screwed up their eyes to be able to look into the blaze of light beyond the shade of their tree. The hot smell from the pine needles and from the cushions of wild thyme that padded the spaces between the rocks, and sometimes a smell of pure honey from a clump of warm irises up behind them in the sun, puffed across their faces. Very soon Mrs Wilkins took her shoes and stockings off and let her feet hang in the water. After watching her a minute, Mrs Arbuthnot did the same. Their happiness was then complete. Their husbands would not have known them. They left off talking. They ceased to mention heaven. They were just cups of acceptance.
Meanwhile, Lady Caroline, on her wall, was considering her position. The garden on the top of the wall was a delicious garden, but its situation made it insecure and exposed to interruptions. At any moment the others might come and want to use it, because both the hall and the dining room had doors opening straight into it. Perhaps, thought Lady Caroline, she could arrange that it should be solely hers. Mrs Fisher had the battlements, delightful with flowers, and a watchtower all to herself, besides having snatched the one really nice room in the house. There were plenty of places the originals could go to – she had herself seen at least two other little gardens, while the hill the castle stood on was itself a garden, with walks and seats. Why should not this one spot be kept exclusively for her? She liked it – she liked it best of all. It had the Judas tree and an umbrella pine, it had the freesias and the lilies, it had a tamarisk beginning to flush pink, it had the convenient low wall to sit on, it had from each of its three sides the most amazing views – to the east the bay and mountains, to the north the village across the tranquil clear green water of the little harbour and the hills dotted with white houses and orange groves, and to the west was the thin thread of land by which San Salvatore was tied to the mainland, and then the open sea and the coastline beyond Genoa reaching away into the blue dimness of France. Yes, she would say she wanted to have this entirely to herself. How obviously sensible if each of them had their own special place to sit in apart. It was essential to her comfort that she should be able to be apart, left alone, not talked to. The others ought to like it best too. Why herd? One had enough of that in England, with one’s relations and friends – oh, the numbers of them! – pressing on one continually. Having successfully escaped them for four weeks, why continue – and with persons having no earthly claim on one – to herd?
She lit a cigarette. She began to feel secure. Those two had gone for a walk. There was no sign of Mrs Fisher. How very pleasant this was.
Somebody came out through the glass doors just as she was drawing a deep breath of security. Surely it couldn’t be Mrs Fisher wanting to sit with her? Mrs Fisher had her battlements. She ought to stay on them, having snatched them. It would be too tiresome if she wouldn’t, and wanted not only to have them and her sitting room but to establish herself in this garden as well.
No, it wasn’t Mrs Fisher – it was the cook.
She frowned. Was she going to have to go on ordering the food? Surely one or other of those two waving women would do that now.
The cook, who had been waiting in increasing agitation in the kitchen, watching the clock getting nearer to lunchtime while she still was without knowledge of what lunch was to consist of, had gone at last to Mrs Fisher, who had immediately waved her away. She then wandered about the house seeking a mistress – any mistress – who would tell her what to cook, and finding none, and at last, directed by Francesca, who always knew where everybody was, came out to Lady Caroline.
Domenico had provided this cook. She was Costanza, the sister of that one of his cousins who kept a restaurant down on the piazza. She helped her brother in his cooking when she had no other job, and knew every sort of fat, mysterious Italian dish such as the workmen of Castagneto, who crowded the restaurant at midday, and the inhabitants of Mezzago when they came over on Sundays, loved to eat. She was a fleshless spinster of fifty, grey-haired, nimble, rich of speech, and thought Lady Caroline more beautiful than anyone she had ever seen – and so did Domenico, and so did the boy Giuseppe who helped Domenico and was, besides, his nephew, and so did the girl Angela who helped Francesca and was, besides, Domenico’s niece, and so did Francesca herself. Domenico and Francesca, the only two who had seen them, thought the two ladies who arrived last very beautiful, but compared to the fair young lady who arrived first they were as candles to the electric light that had lately been installed, and as the tin tubs in the bedrooms to the wonderful new bathroom their master had had arranged on his last visit.
Lady Caroline scowled at the cook. The scowl, as usual, was transformed on the way into what appeared to be an intent and beautiful gravity, and Costanza threw up her hands and took the saints aloud to witness that here was the very picture of the Mother of God.
Lady Caroline asked her crossly what she wanted, and Costanza’s head went on one side with delight at the sheer music of her voice. She said, after waiting a moment in case the music was going to continue, for she didn’t wish to miss any of it, that she wanted orders – she had been to the Signorina’s mother, but in vain.
“She is not my mother,” repudiated Lady Caroline angrily – and her anger sounded like the regretful wail of a melodious orphan.
Costanza poured forth pity. She too, she explained, had no mother—
Lady Caroline interrupted with the curt information that her mother was alive and in London.
Costanza praised God and the saints that the young lady did not yet know what it was like to be without a mother. Quickly enough did misfortunes overtake one – no doubt the young lady already had a husband.
“No,” said Lady Caroline icily. Worse than jokes in the morning did she hate the idea of husbands. And everybody was always trying to press them on her – all her relations, all her friends, all the evening papers. After all, she could only marry one, anyhow, but you would think from the way everybo
dy talked, and especially those persons who wanted to be husbands, that she could marry at least a dozen.
Her soft, pathetic “No” made Costanza, who was standing close to her, well with sympathy.
“Poor little one,” said Costanza, moved actually to pat her encouragingly on the shoulder, “take hope. There is still time.”
“For lunch,” said Lady Caroline freezingly, marvelling as she spoke that she should be patted – she who had taken so much trouble to come to a place, remote and hidden, where she could be sure that among other things of a like oppressive nature pattings also were not – “we will have—”
Costanza became businesslike. She interrupted with suggestions, and her suggestions were all admirable and all expensive.
Lady Caroline did not know they were expensive, and fell in with them at once. They sounded very nice. Every sort of young vegetable and fruit came into them, and much butter and a great deal of cream and incredible numbers of eggs. Costanza said enthusiastically at the end, as a tribute to this acquiescence, that of the many ladies and gentlemen she had worked for on temporary jobs such as this she preferred the English ladies and gentlemen. She more than preferred them – they roused devotion in her. For they knew what to order, they did not skimp, they refrained from grinding down the faces of the poor.
From this Lady Caroline concluded that she had been extravagant, and promptly countermanded the cream.
Costanza’s face fell, for she had a cousin who had a cow, and the cream was to have come from them both.
“And perhaps we had better not have chickens,” said Lady Caroline.
Costanza’s face fell more, for her brother at the restaurant kept chickens in his back yard, and many of them were ready for killing.
“Also, do not order strawberries till I have consulted with the other ladies,” said Lady Caroline, remembering that it was only the first of April, and that perhaps people who lived in Hampstead might be poor – indeed, must be poor, or why live in Hampstead? “It is not I who am mistress here.”
The Enchanted April Page 8
