That day just happened, time ordinarily passed. It didn’t require much of an effort to know that in the car Quinty chatted while Mr Riversmith considered the validity of a rule structure, and said to himself that Pilsfer had got that wrong also. On the plane the child slept, and a few notes were scrawled in the blue notebook, important thoughts put down: hierarchism was almost certainly the governing factor.
My friend wonders if Derek ever turned up again, and wonders how Rose fares in later life. My friend – Miss Jaci Rakes – believes Rose’s love for Rick may not be constant. All through the afternoon the engines clanked and rattled, moving stone and earth, roughly laying out paths and flowerbeds. No one said there was something wrong because the child had gone, not Otmar certainly, not the old man.
Time was gained as it passed, hours added to Aimée’s life. That evening in Virginsville the untended skin of Francine’s cheek was rough to the touch in Aimée’s first embrace. ‘How about scrambled eggs?’ Francine suggested as they drove through rain to the house. ‘Will you help me make scrambled eggs, Aimée, the first thing in your new home?’ The child was silent, staring at the rain on the windshield, the wipers swishing back and forth.
‘You would like something?’ Quinty said, coming to my private room, not knocking, for he never does. He didn’t in the Café Rose and the habit stuck.
‘No, I’m all right, Quinty.’
He changed my ashtray. He placed a little ice-box we have on my desk, with a lemon he had sliced. He left me a fresh glass.
‘I’m all right,’ I said again.
Darkness came in Pennsylvania. The Riversmiths lay beneath a sheet, his pyjamas bundled away and Francine’s lean body naked also. Strength passed from one to the other, now that they were together again. Nutty as a fruitcake that child was, but they’d manage somehow. They’d think of something, being in the thinking business, both of them.
14
By now that summer belongs to the shadows of the past.
I watch the videos of old Westerns with the outside shutters of the salotto drawn against the afternoon light. I smoke, and sip a little tonic water livened with just a taste of spirits. The stagecoach horses neigh and judder when they’re pulled up with a jerk. Masked men twitch their guns, indicating how they want the passengers to hand over their valuables. One of the men is nervous, which makes it worse. He spews out chewed tobacco. Far away and unaware, the sheriff puts his feet up.
The old man died.
Two autumns later, when Dr Innocenti visited my house for the last time it was to tell us that in Virginsville they decided that expert care was no more than the child’s due. Better for her own sake to be looked after by people who were skilled, in a place that contained others of her kind.
One day I looked down into the garden and saw that Otmar had gone, into whatever oblivion he had chosen.
Except to write about that summer I have never since sat down at my black Olympia, and never shall again. I haven’t learned much, only that love is different among survivors. The caravan passed by because we hesitated, but that is how things are.
The tourists come again now. They talk of Lake Trasimeno and the attractions of the hill-towns, the cafés in the sun. They visit Siena and write their postcards, they play their bridge. In my house I am the presence you are familiar with, as you can see me now. I am as women of my professional past often are, made practical through bedroom dealings, made sentimental through fear. I know all that, I do not deny it. I do not care much for the woman I am, but there you are. None of us has a choice in that.
In my garden the shrubs are parched because Quinty’s search for someone to tend them is half-hearted due to his desire to save money, even though the money’s mine. The tourists upbraid me and sometimes become angry, a withered petal rubbed between finger and thumb, the shreds accusingly held out. The Germans shake their heads in disapproval, the French say it’s typical, the English get the hose going and water the azalea urns. I explain to them that all this, too, is how things are. They politely listen, but afterwards they frown and mutter.
Perhaps I’ll become old, perhaps not. Perhaps something else will happen in my life, but I doubt it. When the season’s over I walk among the shrubs myself, making the most of the colours while they last and the fountain while it flows.
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
Two Lives: Reading Turgenev and My House in Umbria
Reading Turgenev
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
My House in Umbria
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Two Lives Page 35