by Francis King
‘‘Looked English,’’ Tiny said.
‘‘Probably one of those Scandinavian students who would sleep on the beach of our hotel at Nice. They do Europe on a shoe-string. I rather admire that, because I could never do it myself. They’ve got guts, those Nordic people. Don’t you think, Mrs. Westfield?’’ She fingered her hair which was brushed back in a straggling Dauphin bob. ‘‘Don’t you?’’
‘‘More than the Southerners, you mean?’’
‘‘Yes, more than the Southerners.’’
‘‘Chris always gets romantic about the North,’’ Tiny Maskell explained. ‘‘That’s why I’ve never dared to take her for a holiday up there. I think it began with a Swedish medical student she was walking out with before she met me.’’
‘‘Oh, don’t be silly, Tiny.’’
‘‘What was he called? Tore—Tore——’’
‘‘I can’t remember.’’
‘‘Of course you can,’’ he said jovially. ‘‘You’re only bluffing. I often wondered what happened to the chap? Nice-looking boy, he was.’’
‘‘I made a list of what we ought to see in Siena,’’ Chris Maskell interrupted. ‘‘At least, I made it with the help of an Italian friend of ours.’’ She added impressively: ‘‘The Marchesa di Canelelas.’’
‘‘Oh, yes,’’ Karen said.
Mrs. Maskell felt that some amplification was necessary. ‘‘Last year she fell suddenly ill during the night in our hotel at Salzburg and Tiny had to go along to see her. It was sheer over-eating, he says. But she thought he’d done wonders for her, and she told us to be certain to visit her if we came here. Well, when we arrived, of course like most of the best people she’d gone up into the mountains. But she invited us up to Vallombrosa where she was staying and gave us a gorgeous lunch and tea. She’s an awful darling, really terribly cultured as they all seem to be, and speaks the most lovely English—much better than the average Englishwoman. Anyway, I asked her about Siena and she gave me a list of ‘musts’—and——’’ Chris paused for emphasis—‘‘and an introduction to Count Chigi so that we can see the Chigi collection. You’ve heard of the Chigi collection?’’
‘‘Yes, of course.’’
‘‘Two Botticellis, I think she said, and something we must look at by someone called Sanso-something-or-the-other, and quantities of marvellous furniture, glass and so on. It was particularly kind of her to give us the introduction because, as you probably know, without one, one can’t get in.’’
‘‘Unless one tips the attendant two hundred lire,’’ Karen could not resist saying. ‘‘That’s what Max did.’’
‘‘Really?’’ Chris looked at her in dismay, and then added: ‘‘Oh, these Italians are so corrupt!’’
‘‘Well, anyway, what’s the plan of campaign?’’ Tiny asked.
‘‘I thought we’d keep the Chigi collection to the last—until the afternoon—and that before lunch we’d peep at the Duomo, the Palazzo Pubblico, San Giovanni’’—she continued to read from her list—‘‘ and the Accademia, and something here which I can’t quite make out.’’ She handed the list to Karen.
‘‘Oh, the Palazzo Buonsignori.’’
‘‘Yes, that’s right,’’ Chris said, without attempting to Pronounce the name. ‘‘ You’re not stopping again, Tiny, are you?’’ It was one of their jokes that he so often had to leave the car.
‘‘I’m not stopping,’’ he said. ‘‘But the old bus is. I wonder what’s the matter with her. Plenty of petrol.’’
One by one they all tumbled out into the heat and dust of the road. Tiny pulled up the bonnet of the car and put his head into it, clicking his tongue against his teeth. ‘‘Well, what’s wrong?’’ Chris asked, yet again hitching at her shoulder-straps. She perched on a stone by the roadside but at once leapt up. ‘‘Christ, it’s burning!’’ she exclaimed. ‘‘What’s wrong, Tiny?’’
‘‘How the hell should I know? Give a chap a chance.’’
Chris turned to Karen. ‘‘He’s a kid-glove driver. At home he can’t even mend a fuse. I think men should be practical, don’t you?’’
‘‘Oh, stop nattering, Chris!’’ Tiny growled, as he surveyed the car, leaning back with his paunch stuck out and his hands at the belt of the crumpled grey flannels which sagged low on his hips.
Two cars had already shot past, covering them with dust and choking them with fumes, but the third, a battered and rickety Fiat, at least twenty years old, drew up and, while two children peered from the back, an old man asked them in Italian if he could be of any help.
‘‘What’s he want?’’ Tiny demanded.
‘‘He wants to know if he can help,’’ Karen said.
‘‘No, I can manage on my own. Please thank him and tell him I can manage. It’ll only mean a large tip.’’
‘‘Oh, don’t be so obstinate, Tiny!’’ Chris exclaimed. ‘‘We don’t want to be stuck here all morning.’’
‘‘I can put it right in a jiffy. Anyway he doesn’t look as if he knew a thing about engines. He’s almost in his grave. I don’t want him meddling about, you don’t know what harm he mayn’t do.’’
‘‘Oh, all right, all right. Have it your own way.’’ Chris sank down on to a patch of grass under an olive-tree; but once again she had to leap to her feet. ‘‘Ants!’’ she exclaimed. ‘‘Oh, you are maddening,’’ she accused Tiny in a sudden fury. ‘‘ It’s always like this. If we get lost, he’s always too proud to ask the way. It’s so bloody silly. We’ll all get sunstroke,’’ she added peevishly. ‘‘And I’m dying of thirst.’’
Karen was not herself sorry for the interruption. The olive-tree against which the two women leant, with its dry leaves that changed colour at each breath of wind and its small, pebble-like fruit, was no less beautiful than the falling landscape whose crowded lines at last blurred into a heat-haze in the distance. Karen appreciated natural scenery, though she could never appreciate ‘‘ sights”. ‘‘Is that Siena?’’ she asked, pointing to the hill that rose up before them.
‘‘One of the hill towns,’’ Chris said despondently. ‘‘ God knows which.’’ With each minute she saw another item on her time-table disintegrate in the dust until, in the end, the Chigi collection would no less certainly vanish away. ‘‘ Oh, do something, do something, Tiny!’’ she shouted in despair. ‘‘Don’t just stare at the car as if you thought you could hypnotize it into going. Do something!’’
Many minutes later Tiny was still gazing at the bonnet, his expression more puzzled and his hands more greasy, but with no other change; Chris had returned to the back seat where she read Angela Thirkell, crossly flicking over the cross pages, one after the other. Karen, her back against the olive-tree, was watching a khaki-clad figure trudge up the road. She recognized their hitch-hiker.
He was older than he had appeared in the dust of their passing, a man of about forty with close-cropped hair, thin, muscular legs and arms burnt black by the sun, and a slender, slightly cruel face, the lips thin and wide, the cheeks marked with two deep, vertical creases. As he walked past, he turned his head to glance at Karen and then stopping, said in an oddly youthful, staccato voice: ‘‘Achilles and the Tortoise.’’ He lowered himself on to the grass a few feet away and began to take off one of his army boots.
‘‘Take care,’’ she warned. ‘‘The ground is covered with ants.’’
He laughed. ‘‘I’m used to them. My skin’s like leather now. They don’t seem to bite me. Fleas, too—and bugs. It’s rather useful.’’ He tugged off the boot and said: ‘‘I hope you appreciate that I got to leeward of you. These socks need a wash. Yes, I thought so. A nail has come through.’’ She noticed that the dust of the road lay thick in his ears, his eyebrows and his hair. ‘‘What’s the matter?’’ he asked, pointing to Tiny’s protruding rump.
‘‘We don’t know.’’ He went on hammering at his boot with a flint, until Karen said: ‘‘Don’t you think you might offer to help?’’
‘‘No. But I will if you
wish it.’’
‘‘Do you know anything about cars?’’
‘‘More than your friend, I expect.… Is that his wife peering out at me from the back of the car?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Why on earth does she expose herself like that? The Italians hate it, even on the beach. They think it indecent.’’
‘‘You’d better tell her.’’
He shrugged his shoulders as he pulled at his laces. ‘‘ None of my business,’’ he said. Then he got up, and brushing the dust off the seat of his shorts, sauntered over to Tiny. Five minutes later he returned. ‘‘Well, I think that’s done the trick.’’
‘‘You are clever.’’ Karen was sarcastic.
‘‘Thank you. Could you help me with my rucksack? The strap has got twisted.’’
‘‘Goodness, it is heavy,’’ she involuntarily exclaimed.
Tiny now joined them, followed by Chris. ‘‘Well, she’s going all right! Silly of me not to think of the plugs. Anyway you’ve saved our lives for us, we can’t thank you enough.’’
‘‘Yes, thank you so much,’’ Chris said. ‘‘ My husband’s no mechanic, as you’ve probably guessed.… Can we give you a lift?’’
‘‘No, thank you.’’
‘‘Oh, please!’’ Chris exclaimed. ‘‘ We’ve bags and bags of room. And it’s such a climb to the town. I suppose you’re going to Siena.’’
‘‘Yes, I’m going to Siena.’’
‘‘Then we insist, we absolutely insist! We couldn’t possibly let you walk after what you’ve done for us. No, we insist.’’
‘‘Thank you, but I should prefer to walk.… Good-bye—good-bye—good-bye.’’
Having given to each of them in turn a small, mock bow, he adjusted his pack, squared his shoulders, and at once set off.
‘‘Well?’’ exclaimed Chris. ‘‘What silly pride! Anyway, it’s his loss not ours.’’
‘‘Cutting off his nose to spite his face,’’ said Tiny. He clapped his hands together: ‘‘All aboard, everyone! Andiamo!’’
Chapter Seven
WHEN Tiny had finished arguing over the bill for their lunch, he slipped twenty lire under his coffee-cup and then put out a clumsy hand to his wife’s bodice: ‘‘That shoulder-strap is showing again.’’
‘‘Do leave it alone. I need a pin.’’
‘‘I’ve got one,’’ Karen said, turning over the rubbish in her bag, and added: ‘‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll call a halt to my sight-seeing this afternoon. I’ve got a bit of a headache.’’ The truth was that she not only disliked ‘‘ sights”, but she particularly disliked looking at them while Chris read from her Baedeker in a loud and tireless singsong.
‘‘Oh, you poor dear,’’ Chris said. ‘‘I’ve got some Alasil in the car. It was all that standing in the sun. But you can’t miss the Chigi collection. It’s the high-spot of the whole place.’’
They argued for many minutes and then separated, with Chris saying in a sharp, injured voice: ‘‘ Well, headache or no headache, it’s not the sort of thing I’d miss for anything.’’
Karen wandered out to the Forte Santa Barbara because Max had said that it was the only place in Siena where one could escape one’s claustrophobia; but when she approached the entrance, she found a turnstile and a vast poster announcing that a Mostra di vino was in progress.
‘‘Can I get in without visiting the exhibition?’’ she asked the attendant who dozed, fork stuck out and head on chest, in the shade of a tree.
‘‘Hundred and fifty lire,’’ he said in English. He spat into the sunlight.
‘‘Yes, I know. But I don’t want to visit the exhibition. I only want to sit down in the Forte.’’
‘‘Tickets,’’ he said, resolutely refusing to understand her Italian. ‘‘Hundred-fifty lire. Vino,’’ he added, and raising an imaginary glass in one hand, he tilted back his head. ‘‘Buono,’’ he said, and smiled.
‘‘All right, a hundred and fifty lire.’’
It was the hour of siesta, and the garishly painted booths shimmered in desolation against the bare red brick. There were signposts everywhere of colossal size, directing visitors to Gabinetti, Direzione, Ristorante, Informazione: but there were no visitors to follow these trails, and if there had been, they would have found the places closed. From the centre of the arena three megaphones attached to a tapering white pole tirelessly broadcast American records to the attendants who slept, usually in deck-chairs with handkerchiefs over their faces, under the awnings of their booths. Suddenly a gun-like report shattered their repose; but having looked up and ascertained that nothing more had happened than the explosion of a bottle of Asti Spumante in the Calabrian pavilion, they all once again relapsed into unconsciousness.
Watching the wine fizz and froth from the jagged edge of the exploded bottle, Karen felt thirsty.
‘‘I’ll try some of that.… No, not that bottle—there may be glass in it.’’ The drowsy boy in the sweat-stained singlet reluctantly opened another bottle and filled a tall glass. It was disgustingly sweet and warm. Karen paid and walked on, leaving the glass half-full for the attendant to drain.
She had heard that Orvieto was good; but the woman, whose snoring she had interrupted, produced at least half a dozen different kinds and Karen was at a loss to choose between them. As she dithered, the woman brought six small tumblers from under the counter, which she then filled, one from each vintage. ‘‘Prego,’’ she said. But they all seemed to taste alike. Delicious. Karen touched one of the tumblers at random and said: ‘‘Molto buono, questo.’’ Whereupon the woman said, ‘‘Si, si, vino finissimo,’’ and filled a large glass. As an afterthought she picked up a lump of ice in some tongs and dropped that in.
‘‘Isn’t that being a little unkind to it?’’ Karen asked, in English, since she had already begun to feel confused.
‘‘Si, si,’’ the woman agreed enthusiastically, while Karen drained the glass.
Vino Santo.… That was a dessert wine, and it was lighter—or was it heavier?—than Sauterne. The attendant was annoyed at being disturbed and he purposely gave her small measure in a glass that had not been washed. But wine is disinfectant, she told herself. Tiny Maskell had said something about that and how it prevented tummy upsets. It was strange that she could drink so much and yet still feel thirsty. But she wished someone would turn off the panatrope. ‘‘They should turn it off,’’ she said.
‘‘Che cosa?’’
‘‘Turn it off,’’ she repeated. ‘‘The panatrope. I can’t hear myself drink.’’
‘‘Signora?’’
‘‘Oh, hell,’’ she exclaimed. ‘‘Never mind. The same again.’’
Her visit to the exhibition had suddenly begun to have all the excitement of a tour through Italy: Sicily, Sardinia, Apulia, Campania, Abruzzi.… Had she been into the Calabrian pavilion? She couldn’t remember. But, oh yes, that was where the bottle had gone off like a gun in the heat. The sun was certainly strong, her head was feeling much worse, in fact she felt far from well. And that hideous panatrope, grinding out ‘‘Did you ever see a dream walking?’’ … It was so old, had been old already when Bill and she had danced to it in a bedroom in the Regent Palace, the portable grinding the tune out until someone banged on the wall. It had been two o’clock. And then the chill, echoing dampness of Liverpool Street Station on a winter dawn. His fountain pen and pencil hurting her as he kissed her, a long dying whistle, running for the train.… Her handkerchief fluttering grey in the smoke.
Oh, she felt so giddy; she thought she wanted to cry. A tattooed arm raised the bottle before her and she read ‘‘Broglio”, peering close to the label and spelling the word out with her forefinger. ‘‘Yes, some of that,’’ she said. But she never drank it.
On a bench in the corner of the Forte she was found by their English hiker. ‘‘Hello,’’ he said and then, peering down at her face, clammy and green in the shade of an ilex: ‘‘Aren’t you feeling well?’’ She w
as lying full length, her bag on its side in the dust.
‘‘No. I’m drunk.’’
‘‘Drunk?’’
‘‘Yes, it’s this beastly exhibition—and the sun. I’ve been so ill.’’ Suddenly she wrinkled up her face and began to weep.
‘‘Well, you seem to have learned your lesson,’’ he said, squatting on the ground at her feet. ‘‘When you feel better, we can go and get some coffee.’’
‘‘I suppose you disapprove of me? You disapproved of Chris’s dress.’’
‘‘I don’t like to see a young girl drunk,’’ he said.
‘‘You are a prig.’’
He took no notice of this remark, but fetching from his rucksack a grubby, paper-bound copy of La Chartreuse de Parme, he settled down to read.
‘‘You have a hole in your neck,’’ Karen suddenly said. ‘‘I’ve only just noticed it.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ he said, without looking up.
‘‘Is it a wound?’’
‘‘Yes, a bullet wound.’’
‘‘It must have hurt.’’ She turned over on her stomach and groaned: ‘‘Oh, I feel so ill! I feel so ill!’’
‘‘If you’re going to be sick again, I suggest you go into the lavatory. It’s just around the corner.’’
‘‘You’re callous,’’ she sobbed. ‘‘You’re beastly and callous. Oh, I hate you!”
Chapter Eight
‘‘NO, not there.’’ The Englishman, who was called Frank Ross, at once objected to the café she had chosen.
‘‘Why not? We had delicious ice-creams there this morning. And we can look at the Palazzo Pubblico.’’
‘‘Too expensive,’’ he said.
‘‘Oh.… I’ll pay.’’
‘‘No,’’ he said in an even voice. ‘‘We’ll go to this latteria and we’ll each pay for ourselves.’’