Rose in Darkness

by Christianna Brand

  ‘But you are your own picadors, my lovey dovey. You make the jokes at your own expense.’

  ‘We are fending off the moment’, said Sofy, ‘when the matadors come along with their lunging swords, the ones that slay.’ But she shrugged off the moment of bitterness. ‘What’s this precisely in aid of, Etho?’

  ‘I thought we three really ought to talk things over; and you can’t with Sari around, not at times when we can all get together.’

  ‘You did a great job of getting rid of her. I wonder how they’re getting on?’

  ‘The unfortunate Nan will be longing to Do Rome and Sari, from pure mischief, will be frustrating her at every point ...Even making the film, we had a job getting her to work in the Colosseum because of the Pore Cats, not to mention all the Pore Lions and Tigers that had suffered there in other days. Not a word about the Pore Christians and Gladiators... By the same token I dared not get foie gras, Sofy, in case you should ever let on and we’d all be in trouble about the Pore Geese. But my Trog looked up the richest pate she could find, absolutely bursting with Jersey cream, she assures me; and then a great hunk of the oiliest possible salmon and lashings of potato salad and mayonnaise...’

  ‘Oh, you are too kind, darling. Do thank her from me.’

  ‘She says she’ll watch you next time on television and think to herself smugly, “I did that!”’

  The Troglodyte had with her customary tact left everything ready and retired to her dungeon. ‘Please God Sari doesn’t take against Nan, Etho. I’ve often wondered... I mean, suppose there’s a bit more to these visits than Luigi’s attentions? and if she thinks Nan’s getting over-curious...’

  ‘The picture of poor Nan as a Follower, hand in glove with the Mafia Rossa—!’

  ‘But Sari does rather readily drop people. I mean, even real, true members of the Eight Best, not just extras like Nan and Charley, however much we may love them. She walks such a tightrope of loves and hates. Dear old Jumbo with his great hooves or whatever elephants have, trampling in, trying to ask her what became of the ring—

  ‘And Willie. And Mary and The Mink—’

  ‘All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.’

  ‘Sari’s far less secure about herself than one imagines,’ said Etho, ‘from the way she carries on. She loves people so much and she works so hard to be loved, that if it fails, well, she takes it harder than the rest of us would, and she just gives up.’ He rose and picked up the bottle. ‘Let’s finish this with the pate and then we can get on to a little something that I’ve dredged up from the cellar, which, however, we won’t take into Sofy’s bull-ring of comparisons.’

  ‘If one had never been thin,’ said Sofy, following him, glass in hand. ‘But do you remember me in Rome? I was really a very pretty girl then, wasn’t I, Etho?’

  ‘As you are now,’ said Etho.

  ‘Well, but the wrong kind of prettiness. Can you see Aldo falling for me now? But he was mad keen then; only I ate such a lot of pasta and began this putting on weight, and as it suited the part, the studio encouraged me. To think that but for that, I might be the Sacarissima or whatever, by now, with the ring and Followers and a Mafia all of my own!’

  ‘That wasn’t the pasta, my love. That was just Sari. From the minute he set eyes on Sari—’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t done her much good, poor pet. But then, when did it ever? Every man she meets falls for her.’

  ‘She just isn’t an awfully good picker. And then they blot their copy-books and off they go ...Just a sec, we’ll get rid of these plates and then we must get down to the nitty gritty—’ Etho swapped the well-scraped pate dish for a vast platter of salmon and salad and sat down again ‘—and the nitty gritty begins with—what about this frightful Devigne of hers?’

  ‘The man at the tree or not at the tree?’ said Rufie. ‘And either way—murderer or not a murderer?’

  ‘One simply doesn’t see how.’

  ‘Or why,’ said Sofy.

  ‘She could be blackmailing him about this girlfriend business...’

  The well-worn discussion lasted through the fish and into the profiteroles (‘She apologises for cream in two courses, Sofa, but I said you’d be only too thrilled’), ending up always on the note of terror: suppose he really is a murderer and she goes marrying him! And the alternative: if it wasn’t him—then who?

  ‘The Followers,’ insisted Rufie.

  ‘Darling, no one but you really believes in the Followers.’

  ‘We’ve got to believe in them, Sofy, after that letter with the seal.’

  ‘You want to believe in them, because it gets us all out of a jam.’

  ‘What do you mean, all of us?’ said Rufie, his white skin growing a little whiter as under stress it so easily did.

  ‘Well, Etho and I know what we were doing.’

  ‘I was here with Etho.’

  ‘And I was at home learning my lines, ha, ha!’

  ‘Come on, Sofy, don’t tease him,’ said Etho. ‘You and I were together, driving down to the cinema and back, and when I got home, Rufie came on over to hear all the gen.’

  ‘I don’t see why we don’t just say that. Why go pretending that we all stayed at home?’

  ‘First, because Sari tickly asked us not to go,’ said Etho, patiently. ‘And as far as the police are concerned, because it does leave Rufie with rather a wretched little alibi. So just say he came here earlier than he really did.’

  ‘Yes, well, it is a bit thin, Rufie darling. I mean, if by leaving the cinema early we could have got home by then—’

  ‘I didn’t go down to the cinema,’ said Rufie, angrily.

  ‘No, no, Rufie, no one believes you did. Do shut up, Sofa, and don’t be silly! You know and I know, that Rufie wasn’t with me till getting on for eleven; we also know that Rufie didn’t kill poor rotten Vi Feather, so we must all stick together and say you and I were at home and Rufie was with me lots of the time. I don’t think Vi saw me at the cinema but she saw you—which was stupid of you, darling, I can’t think why she didn’t mention it to Sari—’

  (‘Pity she’s put on so much weight; I’d hardly have recognised her... Always on the telly nowadays, I’m told—can’t afford one, meself...’)

  ‘—but anyway, she can’t tell now. She’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, well, Rufie, sweetie, I didn’t mean to doubt you for a second. We must just all put our faith in the lovely Followers and be done with it.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in the Followers,’ said Rufie, not entirely appeased.

  ‘Whether we do or not, they suit us all very well.’

  ‘But they’re true. The letter with the seal—’

  ‘Oh, you and your letter!’ said Sofy. ‘Aldo had that seal on a ring; he always wore it, but he was terribly careless with his things. Anyone could have picked it up and still have it. I wouldn’t put it past you, yourself, Rufie, to have used it—you’re always on the side of Sari’s Followers being real.’

  Rufie went absolutely white. ‘What on God’s earth are you accusing me of now?’

  ‘I’m not accusing you, darling. I only say, you could have done it and you might have done it, to persuade us all that they were true. You know what the betrothal ring was like, you could have done the sketch and used the seal on the envelope and only pretended to have got it out of the letter-box...’

  ‘I never went near the letter-box! I never went near it. We heard someone outside the door, Sari was scared; and then she went and got the letter out of the box, I never went near it—’

  ‘All right, Rufie, Rufie, she’s only teasing you,’ said Etho, laughing. ‘Of course we know you didn’t fake the thing and the police know it too because Sari herself told them what happened and that it was she who collected the letter. And I must say, it’s all rather convincing, and certainly a help to all of us because while the police continue to believe in the Followers—rightly or wrongly, who am I to say?—we all know Sari’s a bit obsessed with them, but that may be becaus
e they’re sometimes really there—but while the police can’t be sure, then they can’t be sure they didn’t kill poor Vi and the whole miserable business will remain a mystery.’ And a miserable business it was indeed, he added, in his own cool, indolent way—positively and ap-solutely Sofa had not finished up the profiteroles...

  12

  NAN IN A PANIC RANG up Etho from Rome, the morning after the visit to Trastevere. The high, gay affectionate voice on the other end of the line, protesting. ‘My darling, it’s nine o’clock, it’s dawn!’

  ‘Etho, I’m so worried, this poor girl...’

  So Etho went round to see Rufie. ‘Nan makes it all sound very odd, but I think it’s nonsense, don’t you?’

  ‘Them being Juanese and all that? They just spoke English,’ suggested Rufie, shrugging, ‘because Nan was English?’

  ‘Nan says they knew her title, Sacarissima, though nobody’d ever mentioned it. But I daresay Antonio did, when the girls were in the loo. Nan falls for it every time; Sari was just pulling her leg.’

  ‘They do seem to have been very curious about the ring—’

  ‘Well, but Rufie, anyone would be.’

  ‘I must say it’s hilarious,’ said Rufie, ‘her telling them she’d given it to the Pope!’

  ‘It’s too much association with you and Pony. Or has even the Pope gone ecumenically gay?’

  Rufie burst into laughter. ‘All the same, they do wear huge great rings, for people to kiss and what-not.’

  ‘Gay or not, I don’t think the Pope would be seen dead with this one; it must look like a bag of fruit gums by the time they’ve got it all slotted up together. I must say I’d love to see the Grand Duke’s face,’ said Etho, ‘when his minions race back with the news that the Juanese betrothal ring has been handed on as a presie to the Pope of Rome.’

  ‘All the same... I mean, that message, Etho, whatever you and Sofy may say, with the seal and all, I was actually here when it was put through the door. That was real enough; that’s the real seal...’

  ‘How could anyone in England have the Grand Duke’s seal? He presumably doesn’t just lend it around—’

  ‘I suppose he’d entrust it to whoever he’s got working for him over here; for exactly what it was, for verimisilitude.’

  Etho tucked away verimisilitude at the back of his mind for the delectation of Sari when she should come home. ‘Well, anyway, I told Nan to stick with her, not let her out of her sight and report back any more nonsense. She’s OK for this morning, at Luigi’s for the second application—surely no one will leap in and abduct her in the bedraggled nasturtium stage—’

  ‘But this afternoon—?’

  ‘Well, she says she’ll go moodling. Poor Nan longs for some sightseeing—one feels one can’t come away without just a peek at St Peter’s, she says, but Sari says no, no, nothing but all that awful barley sugar—’

  ‘What on earth does she mean?’

  ‘Well, come to think of it, the baldacchino with those spirally pillars does look a bit like barley sugar,’ said Etho, ‘but it’s only Sari being naughty. She always must be different, and poor old Nan, she’s just teasing her.’

  ‘A bit wicked, because after all, Nan’s paying.’

  ‘I know; but I did ask Nan if she wouldn’t mind too much, to give up the sights and stick with Sari.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s really in danger?’

  ‘I’d just like to know where she moodles to. I’ve promised Nan a huge great bag of barley sugar when she gets back, to make up...’

  Nan had been not greatly mollified by the promise of the bag of barley sugar. Her telephone call had left her by no means entirely comfortable. One minute it was all nonsense, the next Sari was not to be left to run into danger alone. And who was to run into possible danger with her...? But after all, she thought, reproaching herself, one must pay some small price for being one of Them: for learning to giggle over Bernini bronze barley sugar, to ignore his fountains in favour of an emaciated nag, to recognise more charm in a rough-house in the slums than in all the elegant ristorante along the Via Veneto. And let’s face it, she thought, I had more fun last night, just in one evening, than in all the trips put together, with poor Bertrand... She duly announced that she would abandon the tourism for that afternoon and go moodling with Sari.

  They were waiting in the lobby of the hotel; Sari had put through a call to Phin who, by arrangement, would be alone in his consulting room, waiting to hear from her. Luigi had excelled himself and the hair now glowed like sunshine on a bed of wallflowers. But beneath the glow, the lovely face grew shadowed. ‘No, no, darling, I couldn’t bear it! Leave Rome tomorrow without seeing St Peter’s and the lovely Vatican, tramp, tramp, tramp along those miles of corridors, all those suprisingly naked gentlemen’s statues, and for all you know the Pope just waiting there to spring out upon you in biblical breeches of his own—’

  ‘—and wearing the Juanese ring?’

  But you couldn’t catch Sari. ‘Oh, that was only to tease those fearful Pietros and Whosits.’

  ‘Do you really think they were Juanese?’

  ‘Yes, of course they were Juanese. I told you.’ She shrugged. ‘Oh, well—the dear old syndrome again, Sari’s making it all up! All of you, all of you, just because it doesn’t fit in with your narrow little parochial minds—’

  ‘It’s only that the whole thing’s so fantastic...’

  ‘So was Vi Feather’s death fantastic,’ said Sari. ‘But perhaps none of you believe in that either?’

  ‘Oh, sweetie, don’t be cross!’

  ‘I’m not cross,’ said Sari. She added: ‘Only in despair.’

  ‘All the more reason for me to come with you and look after you.’

  Sari’s mind darkened as, beneath the flame of hair, her very skin had seemed to darken. Acutely perceptive, she knew at once that Nan was not just idly going along with her. She thought: she’s following me. Never far from her mind was the dread of the Followers; and now... Here was Nan, wriggling on the hook, trying to make some excuses for forcing these attentions upon her. She said, slowly: ‘Where I’m going is—sort of private.’

  ‘Yes, but... I don’t want to pry, darling, I’ll just wait around, do whatever you say.’ She pleaded: ‘I did promise them all at home to look after you.’

  ‘Where I’m going, I’ll be safe enough.’

  (‘I just want to know where she moodles to,’ Etho had said on the ‘phone, and seemed really earnest about it.) ‘Let me come along and then I can do a church or something, while you go to wherever it is?’

  If I don’t let her come, thought Sari, she’ll follow me. And the very thought of being followed turned her heart sick and cold; better to drag the intruder along, let her make what she would of one’s secrets. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But it’s very dull. It’s only a convent; well, sort of a convent, it’s a hospital really- miles out of Rome, out towards Tarquinia...’ But there came the ringing of a telephone bell, she leapt to her feet, a Sardine wordlessly indicated a telephone booth and she ran off and closed herself in. ‘My darling, my darling...’ Nan saw, through the glass, how the cloud passed, the whole lovely face lighted up...

  She came out, radiant. ‘One thing at any rate is safe,’ she said. A self-drive car had been ordered and they drove out of Rome and into the country, Sari at the wheel. ‘This is such a lovely place, Nan, where we’re going. The nuns are such angels. They were very good to me once...’ She thought over it, came to a decision. ‘You see—everyone was so angry because I didn’t properly finish the film, but the truth was that I couldn’t. Aldo—he walked out on me, you know. After we were married—well, Phin has explained to me now the sort of person Aldo was. A psychopathic personality, no real love in him and no kindness; Phin’s ex. is the same. At any rate—I became—well, ill; it was Aldo’s fault, but that meant nothing to him and the moment real trouble arose, he just walked out. None of which would have done much good to my so-called image, that they were all so keen on;
and certainly nothing I could be particularly proud of.’

  ‘I see,’ said Nan, slowly; and indeed, slowly, a new and unlovely dawn was breaking. The regular visits to Luigi for an out-of-date hair-do which anyway any salon in Mayfair might have accomplished. An illness of which one could hardly be proud; which had been Aldo’s fault but still had driven Aldo precipitately away. ‘Oh, well, never mind, darling,’ said Nan, very easy-going and worldly-wise, ‘these things can happen and after all you were married to him. And you’re quite OK now? You just come back for check-ups?’

  Sari gave her a slightly quizzical look. ‘Well, you could say that, yes; I come back for check-ups.’ She added: ‘But not a word of all this to anyone, Nan, you swear? Even Etho doesn’t know.’

  ‘No, no, Sari, as if I ever would!’ She suggested delicately, ‘You won’t want me to come in with you?’ After all, once behind convent walls, Sari must be safe enough from whatever lurking terrors Etho feared for her. ‘Is there somewhere that I can wait?’

  ‘Oh, yes, a heavenly little church in the village. The frescoes are famous for being the most hideous in Italy, people come from the ends of the earth. And the cemetery!—it’s divine, all these wreaths made out of coloured beads and the poor dead people’s photographs in little mosaic frames in the middle, and I must say more hideous people must have lived in this village than anywhere else in the world. Even the kiddywinx seem to have been ap-solute monsters, poor little creatures, and one does wonder whether their relatives may not have had the same idea and kind of edged them off a bit, I’ve never seen so many early die-ers in any churchyard.’ They had climbed to a dusty hill-top village, its small grey church and walled graveyard dwarfed by the long white walls of the hospital buildings, set about with parched gardens punctuated by exclamation points of poplar trees. In the wide gravelled space before the tall front door, Sari stopped the car. ‘I’ll meet you here at five, outside the door, OK?’

  ‘At five?’ Nan looked with dismay at the available entertainment for a two-hour wait. ‘Will it take all that time?’

  ‘Well then, why did you come?’ said Sari, bursting out with it almost savagely. ‘I didn’t ask you to, God knows.’ But she got herself back under control. ‘I’m sorry; only it does take a while, I thought you realised. I have to—see the doctor, like you said; and then visit all my chums, the nuns and the priests, they’re all friends of mine, and some of the patients I knew are still here. And the children!—well, all hoppity, you know, I mean lame or blind or two heads, that kind of thing, and pretty loopy, most of them.’ She sat again for a moment musing, in the stationary car, her narrow hands gripping the wheel. ‘Nan—never tell anyone. I’ve trusted you in bringing you here. Whatever you may think or guess at—never tell anyone. You swear?’