The Golden Lion

by Pamela Haines

  It rained solidly all morning and looked set in for the day. Erdmute broke the Hoover fan-belt again. Benedict’s Lego was to blame, she said, sighing at the hopelessness of it all: the wet weather, the Lego, the pieces of broken plastic which lay in wait for her daily. She had a class this afternoon. Helen suspected her of wanting to hurry because some of the prep had not been done. She went to her room for an hour before lunch, Frank Ifield and Bobby Vee came through the closed door.

  She appeared when the meal was ready, grudgingly apologetic that she hadn’t helped. ‘Soon they give us examen. I must, you understand?’ She ate three helpings of egg and potato pie and two bananas, and disappeared to catch the bus.

  In the early afternoon after Watch with Mother on television –today was Tales of the River Bank – the children rested always for an hour. Helen usually wrote letters then, or tried to read quietly. Today she wanted only to sleep.

  At half past three Susie Pitman arrived with Gillian and Rachel. Susie, wife of a hospital consultant, headscarfed and wellington-booted, with a breathy, enthusiastic, warm manner. Standing on the door step, she spoke non-stop.

  ‘Here they are, Gillian’s been talking about it all morning. You’ll see she’s dressed as a nurse – didn’t know they made the outfits that small … See you fiveish, I’m not expecting too lengthy a session with the tooth-yanker … Erdmute still eating you out of house and home? Our new one arrives next week. A Great Dane again, they’re the best.’

  Both Gillian and Rachel were well-mannered, self-assured little girls. Gillian at almost six was Benedict’s contemporary, but he would seldom play with her for long – losing his temper, lashing out at her, or running to Helen. Gillian, as placid as Daisy, was a sleepy child, heavy-eyed. The family called her ‘Dormouse’ from her habit of falling asleep, any time, anywhere. Susie said delightedly that even after the longest of afternoon rests she was still never difficult to put to bed in the evenings.

  For a while they were all in the playroom, while the rain splattered against the french windows. Gillian announced she wanted to go out. ‘I have to visit my patients, in hospital.’ Helen said no. She gave in gracefully. A running-about game between the playroom and the hall began. Daisy asked for the plasticine tray to be put up out of reach. Benedict for no reason had planted a determined thumb in one of the smiling heads.

  Helen went through into the untidy morning-room where she kept her desk and papers. In there was a sagging sofa with a very loose wrinkled cover – a cast-off of the Vinneys. Rachel had found her way in there and was asleep already, curled up, thumb in mouth. ‘Sh …’ Helen said to Benedict who had followed her in. He began to cry and cling to her.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Gillian’s took my ambulance truck.’

  She sat down, next to Rachel. He climbed on her knee and snuggled up.

  Gillian and Daisy were playing with the toy xylophone. Gillian’s voice, ‘That’s not a proper tune – give it me.’ From Daisy, no protest.

  Benedict (poor, poor Benedict, how is he to get through life?) burrowing into her, not minding that she was as bony as ever (the sparrow that Eddie had loved). He wept. ‘Don’t,’ she said, knowing it was about nothing – unless about being Benedict.

  She called out, ‘All right, Gillian?’ Rachel didn’t stir. ‘Yes, please, Mrs Vinney,’ called Gillian.

  Benedict had fallen asleep. Her own eyes drooped together. In the peacefulness, Gillian and Daisy could be heard singing. There were shrieks of laughter from the direction of the playroom.

  ‘Mrs Vinney, Mrs Vinney.’ She opened her eyes suddenly. Gillian was standing in the doorway. ‘Come quick,’ she said, ‘Daisy’s got a funny face. She went to sleep. Come and see.’

  Helen, shaking off Benedict, stood up at once. She rushed out, Gillian’s hand in hers. But it wasn’t to the playroom she was led.

  Erdmute’s door stood wide open. Biscuits scrunched beneath her feet as she rushed across the room. Daisy was lying, half sitting up on the bed. A plastic record sleeve covered her head and shoulders entirely.

  ‘Daisy’s my patient, she went asleep, asleep …’

  Benedict, hurrying behind. He began to whimper at once, as Helen, leaning over, tore at the plastic. Shaking Daisy, breathing over her. Her solemn little face, blue. And quite still.

  Gillian was crying noisily, hiccuping. Benedict wailing.

  Oh my God, oh dear God. Both children were clinging to her as, trembling, her legs buckling, she dialled nine-nine-nine.

  19

  The telephone rang in Guy’s apartment, making him jump. The bell was not a loud one but he jumped easily these days. He did not answer it at once. Getting up from where he’d been lying on the sofa, he placed a paperweight on his pile of papers. A light breeze blew in from the open balcony.

  He crossed over to the phone.

  ‘Mr Dennison?’ A young, slightly nasal voice. Unknown to him. Hesitant, pleasant. ‘I have heard, from certain persons, that there are – informations you require?’

  ‘That would depend,’ Guy said carefully. ‘Who do you speak for?’

  ‘Oh, for myself only … My interests, though, are I think the same as yours. I would like to see … Perhaps I can say I would also like to see justice done. I think from what I have heard that we may be able to help each other. I have the information. You plan the downfall of certain persons. Do I interest you?’

  ‘You could do.’

  ‘I can assure you, our aims are the same. When it reached my ears that you wanted to know certain things, I thought at once we should meet.’

  ‘Yes,’ Guy said warily.

  ‘If the prison gates are to close behind certain persons … I think you are interested in proof which could lead to some arrests. Perhaps I can supply this –’

  ‘How can I trust you?’

  ‘Mr Dennison, you must trust someone. I am your friend. Those that have done you a wrong, have wronged me also. Is that not sufficient?’

  ‘If we meet – where would it be?’

  ‘You will receive a letter. I must tell you that for physical reasons, it is difficult for me to come to you –’ There was a click, and the line went dead. Guy pressed the rest once or twice, said ‘hallo, hallo.’ But there was nothing.

  Alone now again in the apartment. Teresa who cooked and cleaned for him had left an hour ago. His papers were all as he had left them when the telephone rang, under the presse papier, waiting to be worked on. But he could settle to nothing. He poured himself a Campari and crossed to the sofa, picked up an Oggi, and flicked through its pages. Some film star he had scarcely heard of had revealed the existence of an eighteen-year-old daughter. (‘Yesterday for my image I hid her, today I am proud …’), some students were interviewed about one of their group who had gone berserk, killing his parents, aunt, and two of his sisters (‘He was always the gentle one amongst us – Guido, we used to say, you must stand up for yourself …’), a mother was photographed in the doorway of her raped and murdered daughter’s bedroom (‘Only yesterday, I said, tidy this room or else …’)

  The pages blurred. He closed the balcony windows. Inside the room, cooler now, he could smell the bitter, tangy scent of lemons – the bowl on the low table, near the magazines and journals.

  I walk with fear, he thought. No, more than that, I get up with it, eat, drink with it, go to bed with it.

  He slept alone. Laura and the girls had been in Paris for over four months now, Tomaso joining them for the first two. They rented an apartment. The girls were at school with the Canonesses of St Augustine. Whether he had a marriage, he was not certain. Probably yes. There had been a reconciliation of sorts, a calming down (on his part, she had never been anything else), a coming together, united by danger. Laura afraid, was to him … There was nothing he could do, in the face of her fear. He felt a terrified deep sadness that all their moments of greatest happiness should have been the result of fear. I am only the one who protects (an air raid in Naples, the kidnappin
g of Marcello …)

  He remembered suddenly himself as a child – soon after Aunt Eleanor had given him the beloved Leo. Had he not thought himself the Golden Lion? Prowling around the garden at Park Villa, and then up again at Moorgarth, showing off to the seven-year-old Betty. ‘I am the Golden Lion. Betty, there are wicked men coming after you, but I can rescue you.’ (Then he had spoilt it all by playing also the part of the bad man – there had been no one else around to do it – until plump Betty had stood up to him, turning round and hitting him hard – not needing rescuing after all.)

  How he missed Laura. How he loved her. He missed Silvi and Titì, who had just begun to be friends as well as daughters. They wrote to him. They asked, ‘Papa, when are you coming to Paris?’ They were tired of all the special French tuition they needed to keep up with their classes. They missed their friends. They understood nothing, really. He wished sometimes they would say, ‘Mamma cries for you,’ or even ‘Mamma talks of you all the time.’ But that he could not imagine. That would not be Laura (even were she to feel it, that would not be Laura).

  Five long months, and what had he accomplished? It had been a life almost without friends. Acquaintances, colleagues, yes. But friendship … He thought it might be natural if, betrayed by Ruggero, he called him out. A straight fight. Or visited Paolo –and cut off at the wrist those small white hands, silenced for ever that voice. I am as bad as any of them, he thought. At the same time, I can do nothing … Would do nothing. What others were there whose names he hadn’t learned? Betrayed by my closest friend. He could never speak of it – unless it was to confront him. And that I cannot do.

  It seemed to him that after all these years, he had no idea who he really was. A Grainger, a Verzotto? Even perhaps by symbiosis, a Dennison?

  And that great will to live? Remembered now as vividly as if it were yesterday. Running for cover on the beach at Salerno, the 8 mm shells screaming overhead. Resting behind the lines in that apple orchard, knowing he had survived- so far. Fighting up through to Naples. Miller going, Fletcher going.

  Now, he thought, I resemble more that soldier, just risen from his sickbed, coughing and breathless, walking up to Moorgarth – to harangue Maria. (‘I hope I die. I hope I’m killed – soon.’)

  And that, he thought, is what may well happen. And I do not care.

  Sometimes he could think rationally that this was just a depression. Occasionally, he would stand outside himself and see for a moment: cuckolded man, family recently held to ransom, now living alone and attempting in some sure fashion to expose and bring to justice the authors of all this terror (and I do not forget the terror of Ruggero, who should be my enemy). But most of the time, he did not think like this. He felt more often than he thought. Fear.

  He had been appalled too at the news from Maria of the death of Helen’s child. He had written to Helen at once. But what did one say? What could one say? He wrote from the heart, trying to send her a strength which he did not feel himself. For he could think only of Silvi or Titì – stretched out, eyes shut.

  Walking back now from the balcony, he sliced some lemon, placed it in his glass and poured out more Campari. He thought that probably he should eat something. Food had been left ready for him. Teresa always sat with an old uncle on Thursday evenings. But he could not face the effort, the heaviness of sitting down and pushing the food in. He had lost weight recently. But then having a build which could easily run to fat, and without the height to carry it – maybe it was better, even a good thing.

  He planned to finish his university post at the end of the year, in June. He had decided to stay for that. Then he would leave for Paris. (What he would do in Paris, he had no idea. Would they stay there? Where would they go? He had promised Laura Paris for the time being …)

  His main aim – the downfall of the Dominicans – seemed to him some days amazingly simple, at other times a hopeless venture – and one better left alone. I don’t know what I’m doing, he would think, and that is the cause of my fear. It was fear always of the unknown.

  Get out, said all his instincts. They had said it even more clearly last week with the death of Vincenzo Mendola.

  Until two months ago there had been no one to speak to. Then he had struck up a surprising, sudden, unlikely friendship with Vincenzo Mendola, to whom he’d gone over a small legal anomaly: difficulty about the lease of the apartment and liability for the joint guttering work. It was only then that he’d discovered, somewhere during the roundabout, courtesy-laden conversation, that here was a potential ally. And an ally he had proved. He burned with the need for justice. He had friends, connections in L’Ora, in Il Giornale di Sicilia, better still a friend who was starting up a new journal. ‘Better that you should not meet him. But exposure – with enough evidence, in something like this. You have your letter still?’

  Of course he had. His inclination at the time had been not to keep it, but good sense had suggested he did.

  Vincenzo confirmed for him how Palermo was divided up and shared, north, south, west, east, in quite a wide radius. If these priests worked on their own, then protection for their victims could be secured. But if they were themselves part of a wider circle, then to go in deep was to lay oneself open to worse evils. Fear ruled indeed.

  ‘You know how Sicily works? You know how she has worked for centuries? And now that we are in the second half of the twentieth century it is not so very different …’

  ‘I have some news for you,’ he had told Guy one morning by telephone. ‘What time are you back from the university? … Good, then I am with you at seven o’clock. We talk and go out to eat. My wife and the children are at her mother’s villa at Cefalù.’

  There was no Vincenzo at seven. Nor at eight or nine. It took Guy until midday the next day to discover that he had been involved in a car accident, that between his apartment and Guy’s he had been knocked down by an Alfa Romeo whose brakes, it appeared, had failed … Guy drove over at once to Cefalù. The plump wife who once had been so aggressive wept in his arms. He could say nothing.

  Now he would like to have asked him: ‘If after all I receive the promised instructions, do I go? Will I be followed? Who knows? Is the other person in danger? What am I about to be told? Am I really about to be told all I need to know?’

  I shall go, he thought. The fear of setting out, the fear on the journey and the fear there, it could not be worse than this fear alone here – wishing for an end to it all.

  It was a week before he heard. The letter in a plain blue envelope was neatly block printed. It was not long. The writer hoped Guy was still interested in ‘certain matters’, he himself was as eager as ever to help. ‘I cannot travel far from my home. As I said, I must ask you to visit me. Please come on the afternoon of the 24th, about five. There are petrol pumps at the entrance to the village. Tell the one you see there, that you are the visitor for Aspanu. He will bring you to me. Come by car. Come alone.’

  Enclosed was a small map, cut out from a larger one, showing the outskirts of Palermo and the route from there up to the village of Monteleone – marked with an X.

  He could not work, could not sleep (but he had not been sleeping before). All these years that I have not been curious … Maria’s birthplace. And the home surely of who knows how many of my kin? And I can say nothing. He knew that even had Maria not asked he would not have wished to. But there seemed to him some terrible irony that what looked like perhaps a break-through, the means to his clearing up everything, should take place there, in that village.

  Once I have been and come back again, it will be a closed chapter. I shall have seen Monteleone – and it will be seen to be an ordinary village like any other. Small square, fountain, cobblestones, alleyways running off, brightly coloured washing strung from window to window, tables outside the houses where old men sit in the sun and women sit shelling beans, or making tomato paste. A small café perhaps with a few tables. Ah, and the petrol pumps, modern addition …

  He took with him the original
letter, and his briefcase. Although he would almost certainly commit everything to memory, he might wish after to make notes. He took also a revolver.

  It was a quiet time of day, mid-afternoon, with little traffic on the road, and the journey took him much less time than he expected. Also his Fiat was fast. With only a few miles to go, he saw he was some twenty minutes too early.

  The early summer sun was high, remorseless. The fresh shirt he had put on before leaving was drenched already – heat, sweat, and fear.

  Of what am I afraid?

  Standing outside the Fiat, he stretched his arms, mopped his brow, looked up at the sky. Kites wheeled overhead. Nearby a flock of lean, long-necked sheep grazed in a group of olives, the bells round their necks chiming as they moved. A profusion of wild flowers grew by the wayside – the crimson poppies standing out. Long narrow bees buzzed amongst the rosemary and the thyme. Aromatic. The air heavy with it. And everywhere the tall thistles, blue, purple, yellow, as tall sometimes as a man. To his left and further down, the railway line passed. Standing there, he heard the high-pitched hoot of a train.

  He did not want to arrive in Monteleone. Everything was too much. I should not have to cope with my present fears – and something deeper, darker, my heritage. My inheritance.

  But there they were, the two petrol pumps at the entrance to the village. A ramshackle building behind them. He stopped the Fiat. Almost at once, a young man, not very tall, with a low brow and eyebrows close together, came towards him. Guy said, ‘I am the visitor for Aspanu.’