by Allan Massie
It was years since Tom had driven in Rome, and once across the river he was unsure of directions. But that didn’t matter. He wasn’t yet heading anywhere in particular. Everywhere on the outskirts beyond the city there was waste land, stretches of ground which had once been pasture in the campagna, but was now full of brambles, pits, abandoned irrigation ditches. Somewhere in that desolate country would do. Meanwhile all that was necessary was to head south and avoid an accident or traffic infringement. At last they got across the anulare and beyond the district where the street lighting was good. There were still blocks of apartment buildings and workshops, but the roads were now pot-holed and dimly lit. Dogs, lean and furtive as if they had seen better days or never a good one, scurried and scavenged.
The road divided. Tom took the left fork where there were no lights, and in a hundred metres or so the road was no more than a farm track.
“This won’t do,” Gary said. “Tyre tracks.”
You’re the expert, Tom thought, though nobody was going to examine every hired car and they would be leaving it in another city. There was no chance this car could be connected with the body whenever it was found, but even if there was no chance, it was wise to take no chance. The words stuck in his head as a refrain.
“I don’t want to get too far into the country,” he said.
“Why?” Erik asked. “The more remote the better surely.”
“I don’t think so,” Tom said.
“Make it look the wrong sort of killing,” Gary said.
They came to a bridge over a little stream. A road ran off to the right following the water. Tom turned into it. A bit along the bank fell away sharply. It was all covered with bushes. You couldn’t tell what they were in the darkness. The moon was just rising. Tom stopped the car and they got out. Away in the distance, the sky was yellow and orange with the lights of the city.
“This’ll do.”
Tom opened the boot and they hauled the body out. It had stiffened some more and for a moment it seemed it was stuck there. They rolled it out of the sheets and it lay at the edge of the road. A shaft of moonlight struck the face, and it looked as if Reynard was working hard to retain the sneer of command he had worn in life.
Gary got his foot under the body and tipped it over. It hung still and he shoved it again. Then it rolled into the bushes. It caught and for a moment stuck still within sight of the road. There was a sound of breaking undergrowth as its weight told, and it went down through the scrub till they couldn’t see where it had arrived short of the stream. Gary brought Reynard’s clothes from the car, he held up the suede jacket.
“The rest, yes, but kind of what you’ve planned, they’d never leave this. It’s class, expensive.”
“All right. We’ll dispose of it later.”
Gary went through the pockets and handed Tom Reynard’s wallet and passport. He took a small tortoiseshell box from the side pocket, opened it, and sniffed.
“Coke.”
Tom held out his hand.
“Them that done him wouldn’t leave that.”
“No they wouldn’t,” Tom said, and pocketed it.
They stuffed the sheets into the polythene bags, to leave somewhere among rubbish set out for collection.
“Time to go,” Tom said, and got into the car.
As he started the engine, a donkey brayed from an invisible yard.
XXXII
Kate said, “I should never have got you into this. I should have called the police, don’t you think so?”
She had said it all before, several times, and Belinda thought she might be right. It was collective insanity, what they had done. Nevertheless …
“There’s no turning back,” she said.
Neither felt like sleeping. They had removed from the drawing-room which was oppressive, and not only on account of Mike’s presence and the foul smell of alcohol he gave off. Kate had thrown the window open before they came through to the kitchen where they were drinking tea.
“Maybe you do owe it to Gary,” Belinda said. “I wish you’d never seen him though.”
“I don’t know what we are going to say.”
“That’s unlike you,” Belinda said, and hoped she didn’t sound sharp. She felt sharp but wanted to conceal it. She was sharp because what had happened had changed everything. She and Kate would never again be what they had been. They might be closer but close in a new way. The balance had been disturbed. Kate had incurred an obligation, and Belinda didn’t like that.
She was afraid too, not on account of any police questioning. She wasn’t ready to be afraid of that, and she might never be when it came about. Her fear was, well, ignoble. What was this night going to do to Erik?
Kate stubbed her cigarette. The ashtray was brimming. She emptied it in a bucket under the sink, poured them more tea and lit another cigarette.
“We should have asked Tom what his plans were for after,” she said.
“I don’t know. Should we?”
“We don’t even know if he was supposed to be here this evening. Or the boys.”
“Oh I think they weren’t,” Belinda said. “But then that may depend on Mike. If he remembers anything.”
“It’s a bugger,” Kate said.
“Yes indeed. We have to play it by ear, I suppose. For now anyway. Tom said he’d telephone.”
“So he did.”
Silence descended on them, a long trembling silence, forcing them apart, each conscious of the other’s otherness. Belinda looked at the clock: 4.20.
“Angels passing,” she said; and the silence held again as if each listened for the whirr of wings.
“Damn Reynard,” Kate said.
A bit late for that, Belinda thought. But you must stop yourself from beginning to dislike your friend because she found herself in trouble and invited you to share it.
Kate’s face was dark and heavy, the swelling under the eye large, purple-black with splashes of yellow. She turned away, looked out of the window, across the courtyard of the apartment block. It was still night, only a couple of windows showed where insomniacs, early risers, were urging on the day. Or perhaps they merely opened on bedrooms whose inhabitants feared the dark.
“It all depends on Mike, doesn’t it,” she said, echoing Belinda. “I hope to hell he has blacked out. He does black out, you know, goes sometimes all day without memory or consciousness. He’s told me as if it was something to be proud of. I never blacked out myself, not even in my worst times. Did you? I can’t remember.”
“Does it matter?” Belinda said.
“But what if Mike hasn’t this time?”
“What indeed.”
“Of course he didn’t really see anything, that’s certain. But … I wonder where they put it. I wonder when it’ll be found.”
XXXIII
Tom Durward stepped out of the car and closed the door quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping boys. It was an hour or so after dawn, chill and fresh. Mist was rising from the ground but the hills inland were still shrouded. He would have liked a cup of coffee. He sighed and lit a cigar. Not far off came the sound of a tractor starting up. Someone, he couldn’t remember who, a philosopher perhaps, had written that we must judge a man neither by what he says nor by what he writes; and not, Tom thought, by what he does.
Erik joined him.
“I woke up,” he said. “I guess I was cold.”
“It’s colder out here.”
Erick stretched, yawning, then smiled.
“This is cool,” he said.
“You think so. I’ve been wondering if we’re off our heads.”
They hadn’t talked as they drove south after dumping the body. Tom had turned the radio on and found some jazz; not good jazz, but jazz. He was aware all the time of Gary staring straight ahead, down the tunnel of the night road, and of Erik shifting in the seat behind as if, by attaining physical comfort, he could still his mind. But there was no physical comfort, and now he had woken up stiff and cold and stretching hims
elf, but smiling.
“When the mist lifts,” Tom said, “I think you’ll see Vesuvius beyond the city.”
“What are we going to do? What’s your plan?”
“Very soon to find an open bar where we can get some coffee.”
“Are you still writing this like it was a movie script?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Tom said. “Don’t think of me as the auteur. I was just thinking that I haven’t thought this out at all, that we’ve just done what was there to be done, without examining other courses.”
“Because there were no other courses?”
“Maybe.”
“Cool,” Erik said again, and though Tom wasn’t sure that the boy had understood him, and couldn’t even have said himself what there was to understand, he found himself for the first time really liking him.
“You’re enjoying this,” he said.
“I don’t know. Last night, last night, I was shit-scared, but hey, look at that pink sky … I’ve not seen that many dawns, from this angle like. Say, what are we going to do with Gary?”
“Tie a weight round his legs and drop him in the sea.”
“Hey, you’re joking. You are joking.”
“I’m joking. Let’s go find that coffee.”
They came down through olive groves to a village. Chickens wandered in the street. Grass grew through abandoned tramlines. A sign said, Napoli 35 km, but it was hard to think they were so near the city. The central piazza was not quite deserted. Two old men in dark suits were sitting on the rim of a fountain which no longer functioned. A bell, thin and discordant, was tolling, to summon the faithful to the first Mass of the day. But only three old women, with shawls round their heads, emerged from the houses and shuffled with short steps and downturned eyes to the church behind the buildings on the other side of the piazza. The stone of the houses was pockmarked, and the shutters and window frames had none of them been painted for years.
There was a bar in the square. A woman rolled up the iron shutter. She was barefoot and wore a black dress and dirty apron. Tom parked the car among half a dozen others head-on to the fountain. An old man appeared from a narrow passage leading a donkey with panniers across its back. He was dressed in a black suit and had a black felt hat on his head. His shirt, which was of a pale washed-out blue, had no collar. He didn’t look at them but crossed the square with his donkey.
They went into the bar. The woman was swabbing the tiled floor with a mop. She dipped the mop into a bucket of greasy-looking grey water and paid no attention to them. Tom asked her twice if they could get some coffee before she lifted her head, sighed, and nodded.
Gary said he didn’t drink coffee, could he have a glass of milk? It was the first thing he had said since they drove away leaving Reynard Yallett’s body in the scrub over the stream. When he got the milk he took the glass over to the doorway and stood looking out on the piazza. The old men by the fountain hadn’t moved. A yellow dog with its tail curled up over its back sniffed around their feet.
There were some chairs piled up outside the bar. Tom unhooked one and sat himself down. Erik followed suit. Gary continued to stand, now just behind them and to their left, sipping his milk, looking across the piazza and saying nothing. The church bell tolled again. Gary turned into the bar, set the glass on the counter, and, still without a word to the others, crossed the piazza towards a narrow lane beyond which the church tower could be seen, with the bell swinging.
“He’s going to church,” Erik said.
“Looks like it. Kelly, Belinda said his name is. Irish name. I expect he’s a good Catholic boy.”
“My first stepfather was a Catholic, at least I think he was. You don’t think Gary’s going to confess? That’s what Catholics do, isn’t it?”
“The bell’s ringing for Mass, not Confession.”
Tom lit a half cigar, called out to the old woman, asking for more coffee. The bell ceased its ringing. One of the old men by the fountain removed his hat, scratched his head, nodded twice, very slowly, as if acceding to some point his companion had made, then replaced his hat. There was a low hum of traffic from the motorway down below towards the coast. The sun began to shine.
Erik said, “It’s crazy but I feel kind of good and happy; that really is crazy now.”
Tom said, “Have you got to that point in The Charterhouse when Fabrizio is in prison? What is it he says? Something like ‘I was always afraid of prison and yet now I’m here I’ve forgotten I should be sad.’”
“That’s cool,” Erik said. He smiled. “This is real. I’ve only ever acted action till now.”
Tom drew on his cigar: soft boy, but handling himself well. They were committed to seeing this through, whatever exactly this might be. Meanwhile there was this moment to savour, of morning in a piazza where nothing could conceivably happen, this moment of nothingness in the young morning sun.
XXXIV
Stephen woke to footsteps in the next room. Sunlight slanted through the shutters. He heard the door open and a woman’s voice saying she had brought tea and he should try to drink it. Then the telephone rang and he was left alone. He could hear her speaking, but not what she was saying. Then he remembered who she was and where he was, though he didn’t know how he had arrived there. In a little he heaved himself round, seized the mug, which he had to hold in both hands, and drank.
Mummy had come to him in his dream and he had been afraid. Fear had brought him to this point. Fear of Mummy with her scarlet mouth and sharp tongue. Mummy whom he adored and disappointed. Mummy who had wanted a son who would be a reproof to Daddy, and got Stephen. Mummy who had adored Jamie when he came to stay and flirted with him. Mummy who had played at Wimbledon and Mummy still snapping the deadheads off the roses in her cottage garden in Wiltshire. Mummy he had run away and away from …
Fear of school, fear of being found out for what he was, fear of the corridors and changing rooms and latrines stinking of disinfectant at his prep school where once Tommy Wood and Michael Cream had rolled him in the nettles.
Fear at Stowe, fear of dark horrors in the Palladian beauty, fear most urgently of Reynard Yallett who knew him for what he was.
Brief respite from fear at Oxford and the theological college where what he was was not unusual, and so acceptable. But fear taking over again when he was in Holy Orders, fear of sin, fear of his knowledge that it was in his nature to seek ruin, fear of what he wanted most, these brief and sordid encounters with the flesh, fear of an avenging God, then fear of madness, fear of nothingness, fear of the footsteps in the next room.
“I’m going up on to the terrace. Join me there, Stephen, when you feel well enough.”
Meg was writing a letter to her husband. Sometimes she thought this in-house correspondence was the closest they came now to each other. She had a couple of shoe-boxes full of these letters. In the event of Mike ever meriting a biography, that was where the writer should start.
“I’ve always known you don’t like women,” she wrote now. “Of course you want us. It’s just that you don’t like us. You don’t like our conversation or what we do and you don’t accept that we have a right to live our lives in a certain way. Could be it’s only me you don’t like. Our values are antipodal. You are all for toughness and death. I am for give-and-take, conversation that isn’t just a succession of sour jokes, boasts and sneers. We don’t suit. I’ve known that for a long time. We should split. I’ve said that before. This time I really mean it. This time I’m going to act on it …”
She gave the letter to Stephen to read.
“If you can bear to,” she said. “I’d like to know what you think. Read it while I make some more tea.”
Stephen glanced at the letter. The writing flickered before his eyes. It wasn’t his business and he was still shaking and sweating.
When Meg returned with the tea, he said, “I don’t really know Mike. We just drink together, but I don’t know him. He’s always rather despised me, I think.”
; “Oh, Mike’s big on contempt. You’re a priest, Stephen, I want your advice.”
“I’m not a priest of your church; you’re a Catholic, aren’t you? And I’m a bad priest. I’m not even sure I’m a priest at all now.”
“Do you know what Mike’ll do with this letter? He’ll write me a reply assuring me he loves me, swearing I’m the only woman for him, and if I reject him, he’ll kill himself. He’ll swear that’s what he will do. What do you think of that?”
Stephen got to his feet. He didn’t move well. His long legs weren’t under control, and he used the parapet to put distance between himself and the woman. He reached the corner of the terrace and leaned against the wall, his back to the city.
“Mike won’t kill himself,” he said, “whatever you do,” and didn’t know why he spoke so confidently.
“Thanks,” she said. “I guess you’re right.”
He turned to look away from her.
“Was that Tom Durward brought me here with you?”
“Yes,” she said, “you’ve him to thank.”
XXXV
Naples was a city Tom Durward had never known well, but one where he had had fun in his time. Probably few foreigners do know it well, he thought, and even fewer north Italians. But it has points in common with Glasgow, which however I no longer know either now. Thinking of Glasgow, where he had spent a year as a newspaperman on the Express when he was young, even before his first visit to Italy, he thought they should perhaps have brought the body right into Naples and left the car in a place where it would be stolen.