Now they sat drinking coffee at Quadri’s, to the strains of the ‘Tritsch-Tratsch Polka’. The man playing the violin looked like Osbert Maycock. She saw it as some ill omen.
Her head had begun to throb continuously. Because of the wonderful weather they ate lunch on the water, a board spread across the gondola: Parma ham, veal, crusty bread, grapes, red wine. It was wrong not to be hungry, to have no appetite. In the late afternoon they looked at silver, lace, coloured glass in the Merceria. Light-headed, she found herself thinking-of a beautiful ruby-red goblet: I’ll buy that for Ben. Then sick with her mistake she became aware more than ever of the throbbing, a giant heartbeat, shaking the whole of her.
At Florian’s, the other side of the Square, Fanny drank chocolate and chatted to Uncle Frederick. He told them that Oscar Wilde had written Salome there. Fanny said to Edwina: ‘I told you wrong about Oscar Wilde.’ A quartet played the waltz from Countess Maritza. Edwina remembered Ned in the linen cupboard and thought that she could not bear the weight of loss and lack of hope. She said: ‘I’m ill, I think.’
At once Uncle Frederick was all solicitude. He should have noticed. She had been too brave. She went straight to bed, shivering now. She thought of cholera, but the symptoms weren’t right. ‘I think you have to have diarrhoea,’ Fanny said.
She drank mineral water until she felt that she would float and still her thirst was no less. The gondoliers’ cries worked into her dreams, she didn’t know if it was night or morning. A man in a frock-coat, white-moustached, came and took her pulse, examined her. Uncle Frederick came in after.
‘Malattia spagnuola,’ the doctor said, Spanish illness, had she met any? ‘Spanish ’flu.’ she said. ‘Ah no.’ He thought probably it wasn’t that, that it wasn’t serious at all.
Two days later Fanny had her Fortuny. An appointment was made at the Palazzo Orfei, and she came back triumphant. It had been a little more than the ten pounds but not much, and here it was: chestnut colour and very simple, all silk pleats. ‘My hair was much admired, by the way.’ She wore the frock that very evening, to show Edwina. ‘I expect Uncle Frederick may buy you one when you’re up and better…’
The days passed. Venice had become for her a place of foreboding, of violence done to the heart, to the body, animals beaten, booty secreted, murders in alleyways, bodies in the darkness of canals – places where the sun never came to disinfect, to cleanse. Venice was full of secrets.
Her illness had just to burn itself out. She was brought a clean nightgown four times a day. Growing stronger, she ate sitting at a marble table in the bedroom. A fire was lit for her, the weather cold and blowy again. Fanny came and sat with her. She had been out twice socially and had been much noticed. Yesterday it had been a prince: ‘Can you imagine it?’
Florence, Firenze – When she was little she had thought they were two different places. But it had been always the magic city, the home of the beloved. Now, even though the journey had been a weakly dull affair, dozing head lolling in the train compartment, she had come to life suddenly in the carrozza, clip-clopping in the early evening sun. A wild excitement seized her so that when they passed near some stalls, the leather goods carelessly piled, all around her faces which seemed to her centuries old, she wanted to jump down and be jostled amongst them. She found herself asking question after question in a feverish rush. Fanny looked at her oddly. She had forgotten almost that Fanny was there, so far back in time had she gone.
Uncle Frederick’s apartment was warm after the Venetian palace, by comparison almost cosy. But she’d been in it only a little while when she became aware of Aunt Adelina. Her ghost, here in this room among the yellowy-blue Lucca silk hangings, the heavy curtains with embroidered borders. She even fancied that there rose up from them Aunt Adelina’s smell. Inescapable, since on one wall (and how poor beside the Mitti-Zanetti next to it) was one of her mockeries of Bay, with its strident blues and dull reds, its invading turret, spurious tempietto, pretty galleon.
She thought she would never have the smell out of her nostrils. It was then that she noticed for the first time the sofa cushions: their dense embroidered covers recognizable immediately. Ben’s guernsey.
She picked one up, looking at it closely. If she screwed up her eyes she could make of it, dulling the colours, something like the original.
Another ghost. Oh welcome ghost – in spite of the pain, welcome.
She had not expected to wake up so refreshed. For a while she lay still, then she could bear it no longer. There was still cold water in the jug from last night – she splashed her face and then dressing quickly let herself out.
At first she just walked. She didn’t know where she was but it didn’t worry her. Shutters were being drawn back, blinds pulled up, trams half-empty still, passed her both ways. She thought, I’ll aim for the Duomo. I will know it when I see it.
She came to it through the Via Pecori. Inside the cool dark echoing interior, Masses were being said and for a few moments she joined in one. Then although she felt it wrong to do so she walked about. A bat flitted by her in the gloom. The thick pillars rose to the domed coloured sky like great tree trunks.
Outside, in a side street she stopped at what looked like a café: the proprietor was opening up, shaking a mat at the door. ‘Café?’ she asked, to be sure.
‘Caffé. Si, si, signorina. S’accomodi…’ Throwing a flimsy checked cloth over one of the tables, he pulled back a chair for her. She thought of asking for some lemonade but he had already disappeared, into the back.
When he came back he was carrying a saucepan in one hand and a cup in the other. A thick black brew was stirred and poured in, followed by several spoonsful of sugar. He stood over her smiling. She smiled back and after a moment a large woman, twice his size perhaps, came through the curtain followed by a small girl in a pinafore with hair drooping over one eye. They smiled too.
Then began a conversation of sorts. ‘Sola?’ he queried. ‘Seule, seule?’ and she nodded. They spoke of Firenze, that it was bella, that the Duomo nearby was bello. She too was bella. ‘Tedesca?’ She looked puzzled. ‘Inglese?’ She nodded. He said delightedly: ‘Tedeschi, austriaci – bad,’ and shook his head. Then he said something quickly to his wife. She was back in a moment with a yellow sugary bun. Edwina wanted to refuse. ‘Prego, prego,’ he insisted.
Some workmen came in and he excused himself. Still the wife stood there and smiled. ‘Bella,’ said the little girl suddenly, reaching out and stroking the comb in Edwina’s hair. Edwina got out her money. But first the woman and then the man refused, waving their hands, smiling. At the door she turned back and taking the comb from her hair placed it in the little girl’s hand. As she went out she saw that she was already wearing it.
When she rang the bell, although it was a servant who answered, it was to reveal Uncle Frederick standing in the hall. He came up so close that she thought at first he was going to hit her. The servant had moved away. He said with a half-curling smile, ‘How could you? Tell me how you could – ’
‘But I only – ’ she flared up. ‘Nothing could have happened to me. I was only walking, sightseeing.’
‘Cheap behaviour. Sending me out of my mind. A tease?’ He was almost crying. ‘I’m in trust. What do you think I thought, imagined? I looked over the balcony, looked to see – you haven’t been happy, you’ve been ill, disturbed about something. Your over-excitement yesterday. I thought of it all. All’ He went on, beginning to cry in earnest now, ‘Helen trusts me with you. What could I say? What would I feel myself?’ (A servant passed through the hall and she turned.) ‘Don’t bother, they don’t understand, they don’t know English.’
But oh my dear, she thought, they understand tears. She quivered with tiredness and upset. It welled up inside her that once she had loved him and that made her angrier than ever. He’d put his hand on her arm: ‘What would I tell Helen if anything had happened. Answer me that!’ His fruity voice had grown squeaky.
She couldn’t help her anger th
en. ‘I’ll do what I please.’ She pushed him off to run upstairs.
‘Come back,’ he called. ‘Come back, Weenie– ’
She slammed the bedroom door and sat still, trembling, stomach turning over. The weird sweet flavour of the yellow bun, rising in her gullet, filled her mouth.
It was a bad day. Uncle Frederick was cold and silent. She was too proud to address him directly. Fanny, who’d slept late and missed the upset, talked enough for both of them –exclaiming as the sights unfolded: ‘Oh, Uncle Frederick, look at that gateway (arch, doorway, alley, roof, column)–I must come out and sketch…’ She was cross with Edwina, hissing at her: ‘What’s the matter with you this morning?’ She said accusingly, ‘You’ve slept too much.’ Uncle Frederick, overhearing, remarked suddenly, drily but lightly, ‘We can’t accuse her of sleeping – ’
Oh, I don’t know what you are talking about,’ Fanny said. ‘Family. You can never understand what people mean when they talk family fashion.’ She said the word ‘family’ angrily.
But in the evening it became all right. During the meal Uncle Frederick, more animated than Edwina had seen him for a long time, was both courteous and tender. Afterwards: ‘Play for me,’ he said, as if afraid she wouldn’t. She did, because it was like saying ‘I’m sorry’ without the awkwardness, and because his asking had been ‘I forgive you’.
She played a Haydn Sonata in F, drawing it out from memory, hearing it come back through the sounds, the feel of her fingers on the keys – My memory is in my fingers. (And so it would be, she thought, if I could touch Ben again.) She went through his sheet music with him, played some Chopin preludes, a little Liszt. Then, ‘Sing for me,’ she said, ‘like you used to at home – Schubert, Loewe. You choose and I’ll play.’ ‘The Shepherd on the Rock’, ‘The Youth and Death’. Then one of Loewe’s that had frightened her in the far-off days in Bay: ‘Der Schatzgräber’. ‘Meine Seele sollst du haben.’ he shouted it almost. ‘My soul thou shalt have, I wrote down in my own blood …’
Fanny yawned ostentatiously. ‘I’m tired,’ she announced, making her excuses, not even kissing Uncle Frederick good night. He scarcely noticed her go.
‘His “Erl King”. Can we? I prefer it to Schubert’s– ’
‘I remember,’ said Edwina, ‘I remember you did.’ Because his voice was so beautiful they were together for a while and she thought suddenly – trying at once to forget and yet still remember all she knew – that perhaps Mother had felt like this sometimes: At one with him, so that it was all right after all.
A gipsy woman with a child in her arms tugged at Edwina’s skirt. The child’s face was covered in scabs. The woman muttered some word Edwina couldn’t catch. Uncle Frederick pushed her away and she shouted at him.
‘We’re only at the station,’ he said, ‘and they begin – ’
‘She’s cursing you,’ Fanny said excitedly. ‘Everything will go wrong from now on.’ Edwina felt sorry for the woman and thought it would have been nothing to pass her a few coins. This was Rome after all. Rome was to be the best of all.
The last few evenings in Florence Fanny had talked incessantly of the Antici-Montani: ‘Imagine, a Marquess – and to be actually staying there. I wonder what the son and heir is like? The loopy one, do you think he’ll be frightening? And the one who was wounded – I think Taddeo’s a lovely name, don’t you?’
Edwina was curious too, but for her the Antici-Montani seemed always to have existed: they just were. All the same, images came to her that she couldn’t rid herself of. For instance, that Taddeo would wear a bandage round his head. She saw him clearly, the white, bloodstained bandage above a weary suffering face.
Uncle Frederick seemed more than a little anxious that they should all get on together, that all should go well. To Edwina he said: ‘It isn’t just that I’ve told you all about them – I’ve also told them all about you. Naturally I’m eager that everybody shall like everybody – ’
‘Naturally,’ said Fanny, looking sidelong under her lashes, a new mannerism she’d affected since arriving in Italy.
The palace came as a surprise, appearing suddenly in the street; she’d imagined something standing back, imposing. People made way as the motor turned through the open gates. She glimpsed a tree-lined courtyard, another motor, a carriage. The porter was tall and bearded and licked his lips almost continually as he spoke. Uncle Frederick spoke to him rapidly in Italian. Bells rang, echoing back across the courtyard, beyond into the distance, on and on.
A footman was escorting them along an endless open passage: marble columns, stone seats, busts on pedestals. It was dark and cool. A great lion with crossed paws looked at her. Then suddenly hurrying towards them, footsteps, and round the corner, a young man. He said at once: ‘Uncle Frederick!’ Then to all of them, ‘Here’s-here is Taddeo– ’ Oh, where was the bandaged head, the wan look? This person sparkled, shone, from gleaming boots to white teeth, to eyes blinking rapidly, excited: ‘I come of course to take you up. I was quite unable to wait – I told them, bags I go down-did you have a rotten journey? Everyone is upstairs of course. It is good you are in time for luncheon. Stefano is not here yet, but the remainder of us– ’ In his over-excitement he seemed unable to stop. ‘And this is Edwina – which is Edwina? And you are Edwina’s friend Frances? No, don’t introduce – ’
They had come to the wide, worn marble steps of a staircase – he took them two at a time, rushing ahead, every now and then stopping to talk over his shoulder. ‘I see you’re already surprised – they are surprised, aren’t they, Uncle Frederick, that my English is so perfectly good? We have of course had governesses, English governesses. By the way, I go to England myself in only two weeks, that is the sad thing I wanted to tell you at once. But before that – ’ He stopped, walking still ahead of them, hurrying down what appeared to Edwina a quite enormous corridor, doors on every side. They passed through two large empty drawing-rooms and at the third set of doors, stopped. Taddeo pushed ahead. ‘Nonnina! They’re here!’
So shining, so alive: he must have taken it all. At first sight she thought she’d never seen so lifeless a group. It was as if wax figures had been assembled to greet them. Five people: A small man with grey-white wispy moustache and receding hair, sitting beside a dark, sharp-featured woman. Another taller more severe-looking woman, grey hair scraped tightly back. Then, tiny legs swinging from a tall chair, the odd figure of a man with a little boy’s face. He was staring, eyes slightly crossed, mouth hanging open. Last of all, and nearest to her, was a very very old woman, sitting sunk in on herself, a stick lying beside her chair.
Then suddenly, it was all different. The tableau dissolved. ‘Frederick – ’ Slowly, painfully, one hand clutching the chair, the other her stick, the old woman stood up.
‘No, no,’ Uncle Frederick protested, ‘please, not for us – ’
‘But of course? Her voice was deep. ‘Dear Frederick.’ This was the alarming (and indeed she did seem so) Marchesa Vittoria. The dowager, Adelina’s aunt. She held her stick as if it were a weapon, not a crutch. ‘You are shown your rooms – of course our Taddeo could not wait. He is so bon enfant, but impatient…’ She thrust the stick forward suddenly. ‘Show me at once, which of these is Edwina? Her voice boomed, a royal command.
Travelworn, tired, Edwina wanted only to shrink from notice. To escape this ogress. The few seconds she had been in the room felt like hours.
But even as she stepped forward, was introduced, greeted, patted even on the head, her fear left her in a rush. Was it something about the jaw, set of shoulders, line of nostril? The presence in the room?
I have nothing to fear, she thought. It is only Grandma Illingworth.
They were ten in the dining-room. Stefano had joined them now and Father Gomboli the chaplain. They sat at a large oval table. Heavy tapestries hung on the walls around. It was dark in the room and although not yet two o’clock an ornate chandelier had been lit. It was easy to be hungry-the smells were inviting-but difficult to eat Ther
e was too much to look at. She could not take her eyes off Eugenio, the idiot son. When he had been introduced he had pulled a face, his upper lip wrinkled, his eyes rolling. Now, catching her looking, he stuck his tongue out quickly, then back to his soup. He ate noisily, his napkin tucked into his collar, yellow stains splashed on it already.
Stefano was seated next to her. She had been surprised when she saw him, because although she realized that she had in fact seen a photograph – from Adelina, she thought – it had been of a younger clean-shaven person. He said: ‘My grandmother has told you already what a pleasure it is that you join us – ’ His voice was very deep, not light like Taddeo’s, but grave, authoritative. Where Taddeo had straight, almost sleek hair, his was thick, wavy above a luxuriant moustache. Dark, liquid eyes sloping downwards, giving him an almost arrogant expression: they could not, would not, she thought, ever sparkle. When he looked at her his attention was total. Possibly, probably, she thought, he is very good-looking.
What he thought of Fanny’s looks was a lot less vague. Instantly on meeting her, his eyes had stayed on her just a little too long. Now Edwina saw him looking, looking, looking again. And Fanny had noticed. She was in any case very pleased with herself, over-vivacious, talking too loudly. It seemed to Edwina that the old Marchesa, sitting where she had a good view of both girls, did not approve. Taddeo, next to Fanny, continued to chat animatedly. The wispy-haired Marchese on her other side looked a cowed figure– when he did make a remark he had often to repeat it. No one had quite heard. His wife said: ‘He asks if the Spanish fever is about in England, how you are with it?’
They spoke English, out of courtesy, Edwina assumed. Those who could not were silent. Taddeo had said, ‘You don’t know how we like to practise. All those spiffing ladies, their work to teach us must not be wasted.’
Stefano said to Edwina, ‘He goes to England soon, you know.’
‘I’ve told them. I go about my head.’ He tapped it lightly. ‘They are the most experienced of these wounds. Also, I’ve many friends and it is so convenient that our Roman season is ending as yours shall begin.’ When Uncle Frederick told him that Cora was to be presented he exclaimed delightedly that he might then meet her. ‘But surely I shall. And then I don’t feel so bad that I go before in this way. I shall still be with the family. Perhaps later we all can meet?’ He was carried away by ideas, plans. The old Marchesa looked on with an indulgent expression. His own parents seemed little interested. Fanny responding, countering, had a very high colour. She was waving her fork in a self-conscious manner, laughing loudly.
Men On White Horses Page 24