by Francis King
‘‘You’re insufferably conceited.’’
‘‘I just wondered,’’ he answered, again with complete equanimity.
‘‘I don’t know why I go on seeing you,’’ she continued in a sulky, aggrieved voice. ‘‘You do nothing but insult me. I don’t think you like women at all, you just regard them as so many cows. You’re the typical Fascist.’’
‘‘Fascist!’’ he laughed. ‘‘ My dear Karen, if you knew.’’
‘‘Knew what?’’
‘‘My politics.’’
‘‘Well?’’
‘‘I’m a Communist.’’
‘‘Oh, it’s the same thing,’’ she retorted irritably.
He smiled and said: ‘‘I don’t think you’re really unintelligent. It’s just that you’re too lazy ever to use your brains.’’
‘‘I’m going.’’ She got to her feet, but seemed deliberately to wait for the hand with which he tugged her back on to the bed beside him.
‘‘You don’t want to go,’’ he said. ‘‘Do you? Not really?’’
‘‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know what I want with you. I don’t know what I feel about you.’’ She kicked out a leg and upset the mug of coffee which she had placed on the floor beside her. ‘‘ Damn! Where can I find a cloth?’’
‘‘It doesn’t matter.’’
‘‘Of course it matters. You’re so tidy, I must mop it up.’’
But he held her arm so that she could not struggle to her feet. ‘‘Let me go,’’ she said. ‘‘ Oh, don’t be a fool.’’
‘‘Relax.’’
Suddenly she turned to him and said in a small, petulant voice like an aggrieved child: ‘‘You know why I came here.’’
‘‘Because you’re so inquisitive.’’
‘‘No. Because—oh, because—— Oh, it’s no good!’’
She reached for her hat, and then suddenly, changing her mind, slipped a hand through his open shirt. ‘‘Oh, Frank,’’ she said, caressing his bare flesh. ‘‘Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?’’
He laughed. ‘‘Of course—I see.’’ With unexpected violence he pulled her hand away and then thrust her head down to the pillow; he kissed her on the mouth. ‘‘Listen,’’ he said, and she noticed how he trembled. ‘‘Let’s get this clear first, in case of misunderstandings.’’ He looked down at her, the vertical furrows in his cheeks seeming even more exaggerated than before. ‘‘It means nothing. To me it means nothing. Do you understand that? It might be you, it might be some other woman. You’re beautiful, you attract me, I admit all that. But it means nothing more. See? See?’’
‘‘You don’t love me,’’ she said. ‘‘Oh, what does it matter?’’ She put her arms round his neck and attempted to draw his mouth to her own. But he resisted her:
‘‘You have no claims on me. I don’t belong to you, you don’t belong to me. All right?’’
‘‘Yes, yes. I understand,’’ she said impatiently.
‘‘Good,’’ he replied with something of the satisfaction of a man who has struck what he considers to be an advantageous bargain with a prostitute. ‘‘Now let me remove your hat—and lock the door.’’
Compared to Max, he was neither a skilful nor a considerate lover; but whereas her body always rejected Max, as it would reject some intolerable degradation, now it lay calm, open, yielding. His was the passion of a man who cares more for his own satisfaction than the object by which he is satisfied, and she knew that, and in part, welcomed the knowledge. He hurt her, and she loved him the more for it, and it was she, not he, who wished the scene prolonged.
Afterwards, when he was seeing her out, he said casually: ‘‘ I won’t come down with you. You can find your own way, I expect? It’s such a climb back.’’
She laughed, as she began to run down the stairs: ‘‘ You are a chivalrous lover!’’
‘‘Karen!’’ he called. ‘‘Karen!’’
‘‘Yes?’’ He beckoned to her, and she rejoined him on the landing. ‘‘Not lover,’’ he said. ‘‘Not lover. Don’t forget what I said.’’
Chapter Twenty-One
WHEN Karen entered the hotel, Chris and Béngt were coming down the wide sweep of the stairs together. Their little fingers were finked but, noticing her, they at once swerved apart in extreme self-consciousness:
‘‘Hello, dear,’’ Chris said. ‘‘ You haven’t seen Tiny, have you?’’ Karen shook her head. ‘‘I don’t know what can have happened to him,’’ Chris continued. ‘‘He went out before breakfast and hasn’t been back since. I’m not really worried, but we did have a little tiff—he’s terrible in the mornings. So many men are, aren’t they?’’ She spoke jocularly, but it was obvious that she was anxious; her skin looked even more blotched than usual, and her eyes, usually so keen and inquisitive, had the strained expression of someone whose glasses have been broken. Perhaps she had been crying. ‘‘ I hope no harm’s come to him,’’ she said.
‘‘What harm could come to him?’’ Karen asked.
‘‘Oh, I don’t know.’’ Chris ran her small, dimpled hand up and down the banister, and the corners of her mouth all at once slipped into despair. ‘‘It’s so unlike him,’’ she said.
‘‘How you worry!’’ Béngt exclaimed. He touched her arm and gently propelled her forward. Once again grief had given to Chris the youthfulness which she so often sought in vain, and now as the Swede stood behind her, so much taller than she and so full of authority, she appeared like a small child in charge of a schoolmaster. But she resisted his forward impulse long enough to say to Karen: ‘‘We’re going to the Post Office. Béngt thinks the allowance may have been sent Poste Restante.’’
‘‘The whole hotel must know about my allowance by now,’’ Béngt said acidly.
‘‘Oh, my dear, you don’t mind my mentioning it to Karen——? Do you? Béngt, do you?’’
He shrugged his shoulders: ‘‘ Oh, it doesn’t matter.’’ But his expression was a mingling of irritation and contempt.
‘‘I suppose Max is at work,’’ Chris said, hurrying on to this new topic as if she now dreaded being left alone with the Swede. ‘‘He never seems to rest. I hold him up to Tiny as an example, you know. Tiny’s so lazy.… Won’t you come out with us? We can just slip into the Post Office and then go to the Piazza Repubblica for a long, cool drink.’’
Karen excused herself: she was tired, the sun was so strong, and she must find the children.
‘‘Oh, don’t worry about the children,’’ Chris reassured her. ‘‘They’re playing cards in the upstairs lounge. I heard them from my room. Bless their hearts!’’ she added, in case Karen should think her last remark had been a criticism. ‘‘What fun they get from life!’’
Karen passed the lounge, and then turned back and opened the door. Mrs. Bennett, her grandchildren and the two Italian boys were all playing a version of Snap in which each of them chose an animal and made an appropriate noise when two cards of the same kind appeared on the table. As Karen looked in, Mrs. Bennett rose to her feet and let out a triumphant ‘‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’’ followed by a belated and feeble bleating from Enzo.
‘‘What are you doing, Mother?’’
‘‘I’ve won again!’’ Mrs. Bennett exclaimed, excitedly scrabbling the cards into her pack; then she glanced up and repeated: ‘‘Look how much I’ve won, Karen.’’ She brandished the pack aloft. ‘‘Look! These children are so slow. You all were much smarter when you were young.… Play a round without me,’’ she ordered, as Karen remained in the doorway. ‘‘I wanted to catch you before you went out to visit that—what’s his name?’’
‘‘Frank Ross,’’ Karen said.
‘‘Ross, Frank Ross. I wanted you to give him something from me.’’
‘‘Give him something?’’
‘‘It was this—only this.’’ She began to turn out the canvas bag which she carried about with her, and at last produced the sketch of the two boys asleep. ‘‘He asked for it once and I’m afraid I
was rude to him. I don’t like him. I don’t know why. But there was no reason to speak as I did. If he still wants it’‘—she held out the sketch—‘‘there the thing is. Give it to him, when you next see him.’’
‘‘Oh, I don’t know when that will be,’’ Karen said. ‘‘He talks of moving.’’
‘‘Out of Florence?’’
‘‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t really know.’’ Karen was aware that her mother’s eyes were gazing into her own, and at once she became flustered. ‘‘You’d better keep the sketch for the moment,’’ she said. ‘‘I’d only lose it.’’
‘‘You look happier,’’ Mrs. Bennett said, still fixing her with the same penetrating gaze.
‘‘Do I? I can’t say I feel it.’’
Mrs. Bennett put out a hand, and her dry finger-tips scraped on smooth flesh. ‘‘Your neck is red.’’
‘‘It must be some irritation.… Perhaps I’ve been bitten,’’ she added recklessly.
‘‘I must get back to the game.’’ Once again the old woman brandished her pack: ‘‘Look at all that! I’m going to beat them,’’ she said. ‘‘My eyes are sharper than theirs. I tell you, I’m going to win.’’
Karen at once went up to her bedroom to powder the marks which had caused her mother’s comment; it was strange that at the time she had not felt any pain. She smiled to herself, remembering how, playing hockey in a match at school, she had smashed one of her finger-nails and had only noticed it under the showers afterwards. She continued to tidy herself, changed some of her clothes and then wandered through the suite into the other room where Max did his work.
‘‘Hello,’’ she said. ‘‘No Lena?’’
Max was sitting at the table on a straight-backed chair, with his back to her as she entered; his chin was in his hands, and he was slumped in such a way that his right shoulder almost touched his ear. It was an unattractive ear, Karen had long since decided, like a prize-fighter’s, with a large, flabby lobe that curled slightly forward, and freckles sprinkled like grains of sand over the skin. He looked slowly round at her when she spoke, cleared his throat and said: ‘‘I sent her away.’’
‘‘Why?’’
‘‘Didn’t feel like work.’’
‘‘You seem to have enough of it there.’’ She went across to the table, perched on an edge, and picking up a letter, read out ‘‘ ‘Dear friend, I am an ex-service man of both wars with a wife, two children, one of whom has tuberculosis, an invalid mother, and no work. We live in two rooms——’ ’’ She chucked the letter back on the heap and asked: ‘‘ Do you ever do anything about that sort of thing?’’
‘‘What? … Oh, sometimes, if it seems genuine.’’
‘‘But how do you know?’’
‘‘Know? Know what?’’ He had picked up a pencil and was drawing on the letter a pattern with which he amused himself. There was a circle and inside the circle a triangle, and inside the triangle a circle, and inside the circle … It went on and on.
‘‘Whether it’s genuine, stupid. You are being dense today. What’s the matter with you?’’
‘‘Oh, one knows, one learns how to tell. This letter’s obviously a fraud.’’
‘‘Why?’’ she pursued.
‘‘Because it stinks to high heaven of deceit. I can’t tell you why. One knows, that’s all.’’
She flushed, looked at him narrowly and at last said: ‘‘ Your eyes are bloodshot.’’
‘‘Are they?’’ He covered them with his fingers in a gesture of weariness; even in this hot weather the skin of his hands looked cracked, as if from an east wind. They were always like that. Ugly, she thought.
‘‘You’ve still not had your hair cut,’’ she said.
He gave a vague smile, followed by a sigh: ‘‘ That’s what Lena said.’’
Karen laughed. ‘‘So she’s taking an interest in your appearance! She shouldn’t make it so obvious. Poor girl, she’d do far better to marry her boyfriend. What’s his name? Pamela always calls him Signor Enos.’’
‘‘I can’t remember.’’
‘‘He obviously adores her, as much as she adores you. All this unreturned devotion—it’s rather frightening when you come to think about it. All over the world it’s being poured out, streams and streams of it. And all useless, all for what?’’ She put out a hand and with her forefinger twanged one of the elastic arm-bands with which he kept up his cuffs while he worked. ‘‘More grey hairs,’’ she said, and suddenly she wrenched one out.
‘‘Don’t,’’ he said, looking straight ahead of him, while his hands gripped the edge of the table.
‘‘What is the matter? … Max, what is it?’’ she repeated.
He got to his feet and began clumsily to stack the letters and papers that lay strewn before him; he picked up an armful, began to carry them to the card-index that followed him about Europe, and then, returning to the table, dropped them in a loose heap. Some slithered to the floor, as Karen asked: ‘‘What on earth, are you doing?’’
Instead of answering he walked across to the bed, with the movements of someone who had just started a long convalescence, and fell on it, face downwards. What was as much a grunt as a groan emerged from the pillow.
‘‘Max!’’ Karen said, her uneasiness all at once changing to alarm. ‘‘Aren’t you well? Max!’’ She attempted to pull him round so that she could see his face, but obstinately he resisted her.
‘‘I’m all right,’’ he said. ‘‘Go away. Leave me.’’ He twitched irritably at the seat of his trousers because in his fall they had become rucked up and were now making him uncomfortable. ‘‘Go away,’’ he repeated.
‘‘Oh, very well,’’ she said, laughing. ‘‘ If you want to be moody, be moody. I don’t mind.’’ She went across to where his coat lay on the back of a chair, and fished out his wallet: ‘‘I’ve run out of money,’’ she said. ‘‘ I’ve taken five thousand lire. All right!’’ He did not answer, and she repeated: ‘‘All right?’’
Still he did not answer, and when she went out, slamming the door behind her, she felt she genuinely had a grievance.
Chapter Twenty-Two
IN appearance there was little impressive about Lady Newton. She was slight, with small, sharp features, and she wore her grey hair still shingled in a manner reminiscent of the years during which she had been Mayoress of a town in the Potteries. Her hands with their innumerable callouses and far from clean nails were those of a gardener’s boy. Whatever the season she always wore the same tweed skirts, usually with at least one press-stud unfastened at the side, flat-heeled strap shoes and grey blouses knitted so unevenly that at a first glance one assumed the moth had helped with the pattern. It was usual for those who did not know her to mistake her for a governess or lady-companion.
Yet this was a woman whom English and American visitors to the city invariably wished to meet. It would be hard to say why. Except to a few chosen friends like Maisie Brandon she behaved with a gross, and sometimes even a foul-mouthed, incivility; in summer her dilapidated villa smelled and in winter the damp streamed down its walls; once a brilliant conversationalist, she now preferred to talk only about dogs, gardens and the postage-stamps whose collection had become a mania of her life. Yet still she was visited. True, she was said to be a wealthy woman, and the reputation of her dead husband’s fortune, long since squandered on gaming, litigation, and that most lost of all Italian lost causes, the prevention of cruelty to animals, still somehow persisted. Such reputations always die hard.
For example, the young man from Cambridge who was to visit her that morning had gleefully informed the friend with whom he was travelling: ‘‘She’s said to be fabulously rich. Her husband left six hundred thousand.’’ He tossed out the remark as he sipped at his coffee, but at heart he was deeply impressed. In his wallet was the letter of introduction which would take him to all this imagined wealth.
He was typical of the many visitors who climbed the steep, dusty path in the heat of the day, and La
dy Newton knew how to deal with him. She was shrewd and she guessed at once that here was yet another undergraduate who was using a slim artistic gift to help himself up the Italian social ladder. He explained how his interest in painting had taken him to some of the leading Florentine houses; and he hinted, tactfully, that her introduction would take him to the rest. He wore a bright shirt and linen trousers, and fanned himself with a panama hat with a wide green-and-red band. He talked of the author who had sent him to visit her, without realizing that she had long since taken one of her unaccountable dislikes to the man, and he exclaimed extravagantly on the beauties of a garden which she knew to be out of hand and pictures which she knew to be negligible.
He was only nineteen and it was therefore perhaps unkind of her suddenly to cut him short:
‘‘But I mustn’t keep you any longer, Mr.—— Mr.—— I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name. It was so kind of you to trek all the way up this hill to see a lonely old woman. I won’t come with you to the gate because there’s a bus which goes’’—she looked at her watch—‘‘ in exactly ten minutes and I’d only delay you. I’m not very quick these days.… Good-bye, good-bye.’’
She turned abruptly; and then, with none of the feebleness she had just ascribed to herself, proceeded to march back to the villa where she poured herself the drink her guest had not been offered. ‘‘Jackanapes!’’ she said, and bawled with fearful stridency: ‘‘ Senta, Maria!’’ She paused, a glass of gin gripped in one fist, but no answer came. ‘‘M-a-r-i-a!’’ she shouted again.
After many seconds there was a rustling, scraping, shuffling noise from the corridor as if some vast wounded animal were dragging itself along; but the old woman who eventually appeared was of paradoxical minuteness. She was filthy, with greasy white hair slipping out of a rag-like turban, feet in what had once been a pair of Lady Newton’s discarded bedroom slippers, and a few teeth so rotted that they looked like burned-out matches stuck haphazard in her gums. One claw-like hand was already cocked over her ear in expectancy of what her mistress would say.