She asked as sulkily as she could, because it was this odious American, ‘What are you doing?’ when it was too evident.
Clark Shacklock had lit his lighter. He was standing holding it below his once rosy jowls, on which fright and sweat must have fertilized the black stubble.
This was the immediate foreground of her vision; beyond it the scraggy legs, the sculptural skirts of the canonized, stood flaming in their glass eternity.
And the little bronze door.
‘Oh, Charles – Clark,’ she whimpered, ‘do you think we’ll be able to open it?’
If necessary break every nail of her hitherto ineffectual fingers never expect anything of anyone else least of all this incidental male.
Actually, she only slightly grazed a knuckle, and it was Clark Shacklock who drew the bolts. She needed no further help in escaping from the smell of dark, dormant mould, into the other, stirring and spreading, fungoid darkness.
‘Wasn’t it too easy in the end?’ he shakily asked.
She tried to mump an answer, and finally succeeded, ‘I can’t think what my husband will be thinking – poor darling – and his tooth – waiting for dinner. He tries to eat, but even pasta is painful in the state he’s in. You can imagine,’ she concluded, out of convention.
Clark Shacklock said, ‘Imelda isn’t likely to worry. I’m what you’d call erratic in my habits. She’s conditioned to it after all this time.’
Mrs Simpson was feeling weaker by now. Well, it wasn’t any wonder.
Mr Shacklock remembered while sorting his keys beside the rented car, ‘You frightened the shit out of me. But it was fine, baby, wasn’t it? San Fabrizio – in any circumstances. The Dionysiac overtones are something Imelda has never learnt to appreciate.’
Above them a dirty, misshapen moon was throbbing back. Mrs Simpson could not see, but knew, that his disgusting teeth must be grinning at her over the moist roof of the car.
‘I don’t quite get what you mean,’ her level voice confessed.
She might not have spoken at all if she had thought he would offer to explain; explanations were for herself and Charles, with whom she had always been in agreement on almost every point.
The lounge had never looked so empty or so impersonal. A night porter (the rude one) had decided to withhold individuality from the two persons who were pushing at the glass doors, coming in from the outer world. Mrs Simpson was grateful for her anonymity. She could not remember that either she or Mr Shacklock had in any way tidied themselves since their escape from the duomo, and as one who set store by neatness, she could suddenly imagine the state of her hair, creases in her frock, dust – no, positively rocks, jostling and rumbling as they clung to her frail shoulderblades.
She settled her shoulders. Her companion was fortunately no more than a vague sponginess galumphing behind her.
Almost at once she caught sight of Charles’s head, his neck. Seated where he was, he had his back to her. The fact that his swollen cheek was hidden made the situation more normal. She would have pounced on him, and shown her affection and relief by kissing the nape of that neck, only she might have trembled, and the neck itself deterred her with what she recognized as a Byzantine austerity. (Remember to share her insight with Charles; it amused, more, it impressed him whenever she translated perceptions of actuality into terms of art.)
Then, too, Mrs Simpson was restrained by her glimpse of the farthest corner of the lounge, directly opposite the position her husband Charles had taken up. Mrs Shacklock was reading – no, she was studying a book. The smaller volume could have been a dictionary, only a pocket one, however. Mrs Simpson envied the composure, she was impressed by the concentration, in the round, creamy face, while equally, she felt repelled by the full, stockingless calves pressed against the skirt of the chair as the woman continued sitting, sideways and oblivious.
Under the nose of the grumpy porter, and herself aware that her stiff figure always made spontaneity appear somewhat artificial, Mrs Simpson decided to risk the large gesture. ‘You poor things, you can only have imagined we had some dreadful accident!’ She could almost feel her skirt twirl as she stretched her mouth as wide as it would go.
Just then Mr Shacklock advanced into the spot waiting for him. ‘We ran up to San Fabrizio – it seemed a pity to waste the opportunity when Ivy here hadn’t seen it.’ He too was smiling, but with a physical conviction which came more naturally to him.
If Mrs Shacklock smiled less, it was because she had remained half with the book she was laying down on her lap. ‘That’s what I expected,’ she said, and at the same time raised her face and her lowered eyelids, not so much towards the individual mortals dependent on her grace, as for a more abstract audience
Mrs Simpson decided she had been right in the beginning, and that Mrs Shacklock was congenitally stupid.
The Shacklocks! Her poor Charles was her first and only concern. She turned and he was coming towards her. If she had meant to see whether the swelling in his jaw had to any extent subsided, it was his eyes she looked at: to confirm that their respect for truth had remained undamaged.
Charles said quite simply, ‘You’ve come! But a good thing you went when you had the offer.’
He put out a hand, and she took it, more casually than she might have if the Shacklocks had not been present. She identified the dry grasp and the finger joints (both the Simpsons were dry-handed, and in the early stages of arthritis, so Dr Simpson had diagnosed).
If she decided not to inquire after the toothache, for the moment at least, again it was on account of the Shacklocks.
Instead she said, ‘What I’m looking forward to, more than anything, is a bath!’ She laughed because the most banal statements frequently embarrassed her. ‘How cool you manage to look, Mrs Shacklock!’ She laughed some more.
After weighing her reply just perceptibly, Mrs Shacklock must have decided she could lay no claim to virtue. ‘I have done nothing all evening to overheat myself,’ she declared. ‘I’ve been sitting here improving my Italian – we hope – on a night when the air conditioner works.’
‘But you didn’t tell us you know Italian!’ Surprise and enthusiasm prevented Mrs Simpson from sounding put out.
‘Why should I? It’s the least of my accomplishments,’ Mrs Shacklock answered.
Mrs Simpson, who always restrained her immediate desire to look at the titles of books she caught her friends, and even strangers, holding, in this case couldn’t resist asking, ‘I do wonder what you are reading.’
‘I Promessi Sposi.’
‘Ah yes, one of the classics.’ Gravity had settled on Mrs Simpson. ‘But tedious, I’ve heard. I’ve been told that Italians themselves are often unable to stay the course.’
‘I shall try,’ Mrs Shacklock said. ‘And am something of a stayer.’
It seemed that each couple had been waiting for the other to take the lift; from the vacuum the lounge provided for them, there could not have been any other way out. Finally it was the Simpsons who pressed the button, fumbling at it simultaneously.
The narrow aluminium booth jostled them worse than ever tonight. The glare made Ivy close her eyes.
While Charles suggested, or the lift jerked it out of him, ‘I don’t see why we should stay on and let bloody Sicily destroy us. You look a wreck, Ivy.’
This was the point, their being at last alone together, where she should have inquired about the toothache; but she didn’t: she was too grateful for his concern.
‘Yes, it would be foolish, wouldn’t it?’ she had to agree.
She would have the rest of life in which to caress a throbbing cheek – mentally, that is; physical demonstrations were not in their line.
‘Yes,’ she repeated, when her throat had become fully unstuck, ‘I did book – tentatively – seats on the midday flight tomorrow – in case we decided we couldn’t endure it any longer.’
She opened her eyes. The narrowness of the lift made it more or less inevitable that Charles should be looking
at her. Her tendency to prudence was a quality she knew he had always appreciated.
‘But the laundry, Ivy – don’t forget the laundry.’ He looked quite anxious.
‘No. I haven’t forgotten the laundry.’ She had, in fact, forgotten it completely. ‘We’ll ask for it early. They’ll have to give it to us.’
‘They’ll have to give it. Though there’s nothing like the twenty-four-hour service the brochure promises.’
As they were standing with their backs to the door, they might not have noticed it had opened if the faintest sighing had not invaded their aluminium inferno.
If she had forgotten to inquire about his toothache, it was because she must remember to ask for the laundry in the morning, and because on this, their last night (pray God it was) she must compose the letter to Clark Shacklock. There was no real reason why she should write a letter to a chance acquaintance in a foreign hotel, except that it happened to be the way Mother had brought her up (to tidy dear as much as to express formal appreciation doesn’t cost anything). Well, nobody could accuse her of untidiness; and as the wife of a professional man, she could not afford to give way to a vulgar impulse of any kind, cultivate forgetfulness, or indulge in the blowsier emotions.
At one point she awoke from her night of exhausting semi-sleep, with such a thump and in such a position, it was not surprising she was left with the lingering impression of a long, slippery fish. She must have made a noise, too. But Charles – my dearest – continued to sleep as only men seem able.
Dear Mr Shacklock she would write. Or expand it to include the woman? Of course she might write to Mrs Shacklock, and leave him out altogether; she didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her before: make it a polite but impersonal note. She did not think she would, though. Imelda Shacklock was such an impersonal person. And sitting reading I Promessi Sposi, in the original, in public! Who could swallow that?
Dear Clark, then? Oh God, never! She shudderingly only half slept.
And succeeded, after all, in waking early. The slats of light, which later on would solidify into its resinous, daytime consistency, still looked comparatively pale and innocent lying on the dust of the carpet.
Dear Mr Shacklock … Ivy Simpson began, without altogether knowing how she would continue. That she did, fairly easily, was partly due to her using hotel paper, which made the act seem less private, at least for some of the way, and partly because she must have resolved a few of her difficulties, she realized, in the course of the night.
… this very short note is to let you know that my hus-hand’s health is forcing us to leave sooner than we had hoped and planned. We are flying this morning to Rome. You can imagine our disappointment. Indeed, to miss Erice and Piazza Armerina is more than a disappointment – an actual blow!
Thanks to yourself, and Mrs Shacklock, we shall be taking with us more agreeable memories than might have been the case if you had not steered us past some of the more dangerous Sicilian shoals …
She wasn’t happy with that. Was she going too far? Or being too abstract, while venturing as far as she had?
Charles, whose judgment I respect whenever it is asked for – it is almost always identical with my own – might consider some of my Sicilian reactions bizarre. You, with whom I visited San Fabrizio …
(Oh, she didn’t want to admit the Shacklock man into her private world of molten glass.)
… may be better able to appreciate its impact on a nervous system made more sensitive by the strain and repugnance of the last few days.
After that she recoiled and wrote,
Ever sincerely,
IVY SIMPSON
If she had been less sincere she might have enjoyed meandering on, writing a university essay. Instead, she sealed her – you couldn’t call it ‘shame’: nobody, unless a Shacklock, was in a position to accuse her thoughts. She licked the envelope. The gum gave off a perfume of a sort, but tasted bitter.
In spite of Charles, who was against troubling the Americans with the news of their departure (mightn’t they turn up at the airport?) she thrust her letter at the portiere after they had paid their bill.
‘Per il Signor e la Signora Shacklock,’ she begun in her primmest Italian, and although the letter concerned only one of them.
The porter replied in English, without referring to his records, ‘Mr and Mrs Shacklock have checked out already this morning.’
‘Oh? Are you sure?’
‘If he says they have, Ivy.’
‘Oh, but darling, we all make mistakes, don’t we?’
She had thought this day porter sympathetic, when he wasn’t at all.
‘If, as you say, they’ve left, they must – surely – have given a forwarding address where their friends can reach them?’ The Signora Simpson insisted on insisting.
The portiere did consent to flip through his papers.
‘No address.’ He was sulking now.
The porter’s scowling face and rather greasy lips would have remained the last of her vivid impressions of this hateful city if it had not been for the crowds at the airport: the uncles, aunts, and cousins swarming to meet the planes from Pantellaria, Lipari, Lampedusa, Rome.
And San Fabrizio oh God still molten in her.
In one corner of the piazza, not far from the hotel where they usually put up, sat an ophthalmiac pedlar from whom Charles bought a horrid little comb.
‘Tell him, Ivy – in Italian.’
‘Il signor desidera un pettine.’ Charles’s request sounded less stern, more an entreaty, when conveyed in her modulated vibrato.
Over the years he had bought many such combs, from beggars, spastics, hucksters, most of them probably frauds. She had come across these combs in the depths of drawers, in the pockets of coats and suitcases, in the glove compartment of the car, even in the tool shed. The combs, she had realized, must have been one of the reasons she had married Charles, long before she knew about them.
‘Don’t you think, Ivy, we ought to have a look at our church? for old times’ sake?’ He laughed to apologize for the suggestion.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why not?’ For the moment her only desire was to rest her feet in peace and cool.
She was still dazed with winter sunlight when they left the train for darkening streets. He had made her come with him to the mountains. To walk. That part of it she enjoyed. She could ignore the Aubrey monologue, which at times actually lapsed, unable to compete with the silence surrounding them. So they walked, and between them hung this blessed silence, and a latticework of blue leaves and light.
The flat air of the city and sleazy glimmer of its streets were intolerable on first returning. Accordingly, she began to sulk, and slouch along behind his back. It was a long journey still by ferry, and at the end, the maths she must try to cook up before morning.
When music and singing from a church she had been taught to dismiss inspired him to drop in ‘… to see what they’re getting up to!’ instead of immediately catching the tram to the quay.
It would be vespers according to the painted board outside the portico. She barely understood the Church jargon. In fact, she had only ever been inside a church in uniform, as part of a school exercise; the ceremony confused and mystified her. Now she might have felt elated for the novelty of a more personal experience if it hadn’t been for Aubrey’s presence.
The church was by no means sumptuous: its stark brick box, in spite of an attempt at vestments and a splendour of lit candles, remained downright ugly (‘an aesthetic heresy,’ Aubrey called it, not even bothering to lower his voice). But in spite of her father’s attempts to destroy both the church and her reactions to it, she felt an exaltation creeping over her.
She would not show it, of course. She sat clenching her hot hands, to disguise her emotions, as well as to hide the wart which wouldn’t drop off, and which she had inked over in class, in a moment of desperation or boredom.
Aubrey simmered with contempt. ‘Observe the poor in spirit, Ivy, and take warning.’ He
himself, she had to admit, had a certain fleshly magnificence which made him stand out above the congregation; his looks, still only half dissipated, were gilded by the candlelight.
The congregation did indeed look poor: elderly ladies, the humpbacked spinster in a mackintosh, the club-footed man, gaunt, solitary, hollow-eyed boys. She decided not to look at her fellow men, any more than at her father, but let the words lap around her. The incense crept into the folds of her clothes, to mingle with the scent of wood-smoke from the fire she had lit that same day. The words penetrated a latticework of blue leaves and light, into a mountain silence. She was climbing with them.
She would have joined her voice to those of the reedy priests, the humpbacked woman, the club-footed man, if she had known the language. That was her loss, but not an important one, it seemed.
‘… while the King sitteth at His table, my spikenard sendeth forth the perfume thereof …’
Aubrey turned and winked. ‘Good stuff, nevertheless!’ his face bursting, every pore overflowing.
The priests and servers were processing down the nave in spirals of incense and columns of piety, when the spotty young man swinging the censer dropped it almost at Aubrey’s feet. It clanked and rattled, still erupting, before it was retrieved. Aubrey apparently was too startled to comment.
The thread which had been spun between herself and the devotions of those who belonged had not been broken, she thought. Or had it? The spots on the face of the young man who had dropped the censer were feverishly close. She looked down, and there on her thumb was the inky wart which medicine and magic had failed to remove.
She felt numbed by the rapid descent to the side of her inescapable father, whom she saw, at best, as a shabby corsair.
The voices continued picking their way, unconcerned by the presence of the uninitiated; she herself might have prayed for grace if she had been alone, and if she had known how to form the words.
‘… his left hand is under my head and his right hand doth embrace me …’ the voices chanted.
The Cockatoos Page 24