‘OK,’ said Charlesworth, dangerously.
‘—and while she waited she went into the chapel and knelt down to pray. I followed her in. That Madonna, sir!—it’s really pretty spectacular—’
‘But what happened?’
‘What actually happened, sir? Well, a message came and she went in to see the Mother Abbess. I waited till she came back into the hall—’
‘And then?’
‘And then went in to see the Mother Abbess,’ said Ginger sweetly.
Meanwhile, at the flat in Hampstead, Etho had arrived for a late lunch, and was highly entertained by the history of the Flight from Rome—‘Not that I believe a word of it: you just came downstairs before Nan did and paid your bill and went off to the airport...’
‘I went and got this man, you can ask the Sardines.’
‘The Sardines will say anything you ask them, for a couple of bob,’ said Etho, as Ginger had earlier that morning said to Charlesworth. ‘Never mind, it’s much more fun the way you tell it. But this business up at the convent...’
She had telephoned Phin and they were meeting that night, for dinner; she was aglow with happiness but beneath it was a terrible fear. Her skin had the strangely dark look that it took when she was under great strain, not a greyness but a darkness, a darkening, not even physical perhaps, of the whole lovely face. She looked round at them. ‘You three—you’re the only ones in all the world that I can really trust; you three. You know me and you can understand me. You know what they think now isn’t true; but you know it’s what they’ll think.’
Etho sat on the couch, her hand held lightly and lovingly in his own. ‘They’ll think that four years ago you went into the hospital to have a child. They’ll think that that little boy—crippled and mentally defective—is Aldo’s legitimate heir. It’s as simple as that.’
‘Would it matter so very to them?’ said Sofy. ‘They seem to pretty well make up their own rules. I mean, didn’t the Grand Duke just write off the marriage by declaring it annulled?’
‘It was more complicated than that,’ said Etho. ‘They’d been married in Rome, a church wedding—’
‘But you’re not a Catholic, Sari?’
‘I just said I was,’ said Sari, shrugging. ‘It seemed easiest.’
‘—and the Grand Duchess, being a real Catholic, and very devout—well, she wouldn’t take that too lightly.’
‘It seems a curious way of getting out of it,’ suggested Sofy, ‘that this devout lady should prefer to lend herself to murder.’
‘I don’t suppose she’d know anything about murder,’ said Sari. ‘She’d simply report back to the Grand Duke. Of course Aldo will never have said a word about it, the whole thing was probably as much of a shock to her as she was to me.’
‘Then why should she be there? How could she know where you’d be going?’
‘They follow me anyway,’ said Sari, despairingly, ‘wherever I’m going.’
‘Dovey-darling—you simply contact them now and tell them it isn’t true?’
‘Why would they believe me?’
‘The Reverend Mother there would tell them—’
‘Why would they believe her? But anyway, the nuns don’t know much about it. I used my stage name, they simply took me in, I was ill—’
‘For all those months, Sari? It does take some explaining?’
‘Not to you, Sofy, I hope?’ said Sari, with ice in her voice.
‘She was ill,’ said Etho. ‘Nobody could make out what was wrong, but she was ill, the studio told me to look after her, she was their property.’ And without Sari observing that he informed them, he informed them. ‘The studio knows there was never a question of any child.’
‘Well, can I ask you, Sari, without you freezing me to death—who is this particular child? I mean, why do you bother with him?’
‘I bother with him because he’s a poor, forlorn little orphan who was dumped on their doorstep about the time I first went there, and I got fond of him. And I—most astoundingly, I know, quite incredible, isn’t it?—happen to still be sorry for him and try to be kind to him. If that makes him my child, I’d better not go round patting dogs any more; or maybe my Pore Horse—’
‘Sari, Sari!’ said Etho. His grip tightened on her hand. ‘Keep it cool, darling, nobody’s doubting you, Sofy only wants to sort the thing out.’
‘She can sort it out for herself,’ said Sofy, resentfully. She heaved herself up from her armchair. ‘I’ve got to go, anyway, I’ve got a rehearsal.’ Stage-trained, she moved her bulk smoothly and almost gracefully to the door. ‘Well, goodbye Sari, and I hope you’re in a slightly better temper next time I see you.’
Sari sat slumped on the couch. ‘Oh, God!’ She said, wretchedly: ‘She might make a few allowances. It’s bad enough without her.’
‘She’ll come round, Sari, never mind.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Sari, rousing herself. ‘Let her go! She’s probably a bloody traitor like all the rest of them.’
‘Oh, darling, you know she isn’t!’
‘No, she isn’t, she couldn’t have known we were going to the convent, that was bloody Nan. Sent a message while I was fixing about the hire car...’ She scrambled to her feet. ‘She thinks the child was mine. She thought at first I was being treated for V.D., it was hilarious; but her face when she saw me standing there with the kid clutching my blue wiggy-pig—’
‘You told us you’d broken the wiggy-pig.’
‘Yes, well I didn’t want everyone knowing I was going out to the convent, that’s my own business, why should she know all about me? But he does love bright colours and I was so hard up, so I stuck the wiggy-pig in my safari-bag and just took him along. But she thinks she’s got me now, she’ll be on the blower to San Juan at this very minute, or to her precious Bellissima in Rome. Hiding away from me they were, in a little side garden, thinking I’d come out by the front door; and the funny part is, that I came out by the side door, trying to hide from Nan. She insisted on coming, it would have looked suspicious to refuse, and I thought I could fool her...’
‘I’ve told you, Sari, I asked her to stick with you in case you were in any trouble. It was perfectly innocent.’
‘Yes, a lovely excuse—rang up and told you a lot of rubbish and scared you into asking her. She’s no innocent, not dear Madame Winter, damn, sneaking traitor, with her spinach hair and her one single joke—’
‘Spinach hair?’
‘Well, I did let Luigi jazz her up a bit but actually it turned out rather well. Boring, but good, not like dear Nan herself, who’s boring and bad.’
‘Sari, of course she wasn’t in league with them, how could she be?’
‘Then who was? One of all of you? But you couldn’t have known about the convent, nobody knew.’ She disappeared into the bedroom. ‘A quick wee, and then I’m going to see Nan and give her bloody hell.’
Nan in a very real anguish had called in a dear friend from the local church who had been what she whimsically called her Shoulder, at the time of Bertrand’s death. The clergyman looked exceedingly alarmed at the appearance of the tall, slender figure in its close-fitting black coat, crowned with a garden Red Hot Poker of flaming hair. Etho followed her in, by no means very comfortable but with his customary detachment. Nan cried out: ‘Oh, darling Sari!—you’re safe?’
‘Not with friends like you around,’ said Sari.
‘You misunderstood—’
‘Yes, I did but I don’t any longer. So you just get on the ‘phone, you damn, traitorous bitch!—and ring up your precious employers and tell them what I tell you to say. Tell them—’
‘Mrs Winter—I simply can’t let you be spoken to like this.’
‘You keep your damn clerical trap shut!’ said Sari, whipping herself up into royal rage. ‘What business is it of yours? Or are you in it too, a nice hand-out from the Cattolica Rossa of San Juan to the dear C. of E.?’
‘Sari, please!’ implored Nan.
‘Yes, w
ell, Nan please! Please get on to the telephone if you can find it under whatever gruesome frilly taffeta telephone cosy it wears, and ring up your bloody Grand Duchess and tell her—’
‘Sari, how can I ring up the Grand Duchess?—I didn’t even know she was the Grand Duchess—’
‘Then what where you doing sneaking around with her, how did she know I’d be there? You think that child was my child, don’t you? You think I had the child in the convent hospital and left it there, walked out on it, just the sort of thing I would do, of course—’
‘I had no idea why you’d been in the hospital—’
‘No of course not, that’s what you came to find out, you insisted on coming with me—’
‘Etho asked me—’
But Sari swept on. ‘—and niggling on at me about why I’d been there. At first you thought I’d had V.D., didn’t you?—a nice dose of the clap, that’s what your lady-like little mind rose to, so charming! And so Christian!—me and my Shame and you so broad-minded and charitable, associating with the poor leper, looking down your damn superior, lady-like nose—’
‘Miss Morne, I simply can’t allow—’
‘Shut up!’ she said, turning upon him like a fishwife. ‘Clear out, go and strangle yourself with your dog-collar! It’s you that’s made her what she is, blind to human weaknesses and human agonies, it’s from you she gets these pretensions to charity. We were always hearing about your Beautiful Influence—toffee-nosed hypocrites that never knew a decent temptation in the whole of your narrow little lives, condescending towards people a damn sight better with all their faults than you’ll ever know how to be, because you simply have no idea what you’re talking about... You’re minuses, that’s what you are, no plus, nothing, just minuses...’ She swung back to Etho. ‘It’s no good, let’s skip it, let’s get out of this place. There’s no use telling her; whatever’s worst to believe about me, that she’ll go on believing because this dog-collared he-goat here will tell her to. Come on—we’re leaving!’
‘And good riddance,’ said the clergyman, very white, with shaking hands. ‘You’ve been here quite long enough.’
‘That’s right: good riddance to the truth about yourselves for once. So come on Etho!—as he says, we have been here long enough: let’s do a Cromwell and in the name of God—go!’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Etho to the trembling Nan. ‘She knows it’s not true, she knows you’ve done nothing, but she’s been very badly shocked and she has to find somebody to blame.’ Sari interrupted but he overrode her. ‘There was nothing wrong about her being in the hospital, Nan, the child wasn’t her child and you can take that from me. So now, just write us all off—’
‘Indeed she will,’ said the clergyman.
‘Yes. I daresay in the end, poor dear,’ said Etho, ‘she’s best with you. So, Nan, just—forget us. I’m sorry about all this. OK, Sari, come along!’ But in the neat pinky painted corridor, walking down the stairs with their excellent carpet in a deeper shade of rose, he took her arm. ‘Well, not very pretty, my love, was it? Or very kind. Still, I daresay you feel better.’
‘They’re so damn smug. Call themselves Christians!—what would Christ have thought of them?’
‘They believe they have the answer,’ he said mildly, ‘and they make no allowance for any other answers or for people to be free to choose their own answers for themselves. They’re perfectly nice people, just ordinary. Still, it won’t do them any harm to get a bit of a shake-up. Only don’t do it again, because if I saw too much of it, I might come to love you less.’
She climbed into the car beside him. ‘But you never will, Etho, will you? You never will?’ She folded her two hands round his upper arm and for a moment leant her bright head against his cheek. ‘I couldn’t manage without you, could I? You’ve always been there.’
‘And I’ll always be there. I know you, Sari, so I understand you best.’
‘And always love me?’
‘Yes, always. But just because I love you, don’t teach me not to like you.’ He gently released his arm, switched on the ignition and slowly drove out of the drive. She sat beside him, hugging the inevitable painted safari-bag on her knee. ‘When you say love me, Etho—do you mean love me? Or just—love me?’
He kept his eyes steadily on the road. ‘I mean just love you. You sort of—belong to me. It’s a little bit like you and that child—I care for you. You’d do anything for the child, to help it and protect it. And I’d do anything for you.’
‘Anything?’ she said, in a sort of wondering way.
‘You don’t face facts, Sari do you?’ he said. ‘Yes—anything.’ With no change in his voice, he added: ‘Like taking you home for a quick wee and a slow application of powders and paints and putting on your bestermost to meet your dear Phineas for dinner...’
‘And the whole weekend,’ said Sari, blissfully.
The weekend proved not an unqualified success. Ena Meena, introduced again to the bright stranger, grew suspicious and militant and when Phin accordingly removed his beloved, resented his absence from home. Nanny added lavishly to the telephone bill with calls to Mummy. Neither was best pleased: once Phin had acquired a respectable wife—even if she did look as though she wore her hair on fire—it was hard to see why the courts should ever remove her to the care of her mum, and Ena’s blackmailing hold on Phin was gone. The only hope was to urge Ena Mee on to ever greater shows of grief and jealousy and this, without the smallest regard for the child’s true feelings, both ladies proceeded ceaselessly to do. Phin, deeply in love, was nevertheless unable to conceal his anxiety; Sari, for all her happiness, in the depths of her soul was sick with many fears. And if she should lose this, the last ever, surely, hope for peace and happiness... Meanwhile...
To say that, on sight, Phin Devigne became a devoted admirer of his lady’s little clique, would be to exaggerate. A party must be fixed for the Sunday evening, when he could meet them all; Sari in her happiness summoned back lapsed friends of days gone by - none that she had deliberately abandoned; with Sari, once you had betrayed her love for you, that was the end. But several were invited who, by forming outside relationships, had faded away; even the Ites as they were called by the circle, short for the Something-or-Otherites, they never could remember the name of the sect—somewhat sheepish in their saffron robes, with their shaven heads—whether male or female Phin could not be entirely sure—but anyway it appeared to make little difference in Sari’s entourage. Sari was enchanted to see them, ‘Oh, darlings, what heaven! Rufie hung about all day in Oxford Street hoping you’d come hopping by. And your hair-do’s!—sort of the opposite of tonsures, with the little pigtails hanging down! And the tambourines!’
‘Darling, stash them away somewhere for goodness’ sake!—only don’t let us forget them, it’s as much as tomorrow’s rice-ration is worth. My dear, the trouble getting away—!’
‘We had to sing plans to each other as we skipped along.’
‘She’s supposed to be in St George’s Hospital with a suspect ankle, hopped off the pavement by mistake. At this very minute, for a bet, Hyde Park Corner’s a bedlam of goodwill rattling and chanting.’
‘How can you endure it?’
‘Well, they’re lovely people and, like I say, there’s the rice-ration.’
‘I most specifically said to Sofa, no risotto or paella.’ For Sofy was back with mutual apologies and busy in the kitchen, ‘So lucky for all of you, because no one else can get in to help, so I can’t complain,’ and meanwhile more and more guests arrived to be crossed off mentally by civilly smiling Phin from any guest list of his own, once he got his bride safely home. It could be of little comfort that Sari should confide to him that all the girls were going beresk about him—(‘Berserk, darling,’ corrected Phin, automatically)—and in fact everyone thought he was ap-solutely fabulous. And they were extraordinarily charming to him, replacing one another on the couch beside him to say how wonderful it all was, how happy it would all be, and over and over aga
in what a terribly special, marvellous lady he had got, so lovely and beautiful and funny, and so sweet and kind, so loving and giving... Phin glanced down rather wretchedly at the offering of her love which indeed suggested a very madness of generosity—so much tortured gold must have cost the earth and already he was planning the double life it must lead, displayed at home on his little finger in all its barbaric glory, slipped into his pocket before patients and staff could catch any glimpse of it. As to its cost, he need not have worried; though she did not tell him, Sari had confided to her intimates the by no means unusual story of how a lovely gentleman in the shop, in this case a gentleman of Arabic origin, had seen with what reluctance she refused the purchase and hurried after her, begging, with many assertions of total disinterestedness, to allow him to give it to her. To him the money meant nothing, and after just one smile on that—forgive me, most beautiful lady, please understand!—on that wonderful face, he would disappear from her life. She always did with perfect simplicity accept, and in fact they always did keep to their promise. But instinct told her at least that Phineas Devigne, Esq. F.R.C.S. would not look upon this as the most acceptable way of acquiring a betrothal ring.
A betrothal ring. Why had she given Phin a betrothal ring when the very words stirred her heart to a panic of fear? As, by curious leaps and bounds of time, the meal progressed (‘Oh, darlings, I am so sorry but it’s your fault, you wouldn’t be ready, and now it’s gone as flat as a pancake...’) she muttered to Rufie, ‘Where’s Pony? Didn’t you ask him?’
‘I couldn’t find him. The boys say he’s gone back to Rome.’
‘I thought he was supposed to be a Neapolitan?’
‘No, they say in fact he came from Rome,’ said Rufie, unwisely.
‘From Rome? Rufie, you don’t think it was Pony—?’
‘Darling, he was here in the flat, the whole time you were away.’
Rose in Darkness Page 19
