by Francis King
‘‘It’s bigger than my other monkey. Look, Pamela!’’
Maisie yawned, stretching her bony arms and extending her fingers high above her head. ‘‘Oh—oh—oh! I’m so tired, but so tired! I didn’t sleep a wink. And neither did Chris’s Swede from the noise he made next door. Poor boy, I suppose it was the thought of her that was keeping him awake. Sometimes the thought of Chris keeps me awake, too.’’ She gave her pebbles-in-a-tin laugh. ‘‘It’s priceless, I do think! But I can see what she sees in him. Can’t you, Pamela?’’
She appealed to the sixteen-year-old girl who at once felt enormously flattered.
‘‘Well, I don’t know, Maisie,’’ Pamela deliberated. ‘‘I don’t know.… Yes there must be something about him. I suppose he has got sex-appeal.’’
‘‘You bet,’’ Maisie said, yawning and stretching once again, while Mrs. Bennett scowled at her for attempting such a conversation with the children.
‘‘Oh,’’ an anxiously high-pitched voice said from one of the bedroom doors. ‘‘Oh, there you all are. I suppose Max isn’t here, is he? Is he?’’ It was Chris, in the state of anxiety which appeared to have become habitual with her during the last few days. Her hair was unkempt, and the skin of her face, covered inexpertly with powder, was curiously blotched and greasy. She had a boil on her chin which she had covered with a piece of sticking-plaster. There was a terrible pathos about her which even the children felt, though they could not have said what caused it.
‘‘Max has had to drive to Pisa on business,’’ Mrs. Bennett said.
‘‘When will he be back?’’
‘‘I don’t know. Probably not until this evening.’’
‘‘Oh, Lord.’’ Chris swayed, as if about to faint, and put both hands to her temples.
‘‘Is it something urgent?’’
‘‘Yes—no,’’ Chris hastily corrected herself. ‘‘ Oh, it’s not urgent but I ought to see him. Immediately. I don’t know what to do,’’ she added.
‘‘Can I help?’’ Maisie offered.
‘‘No, I must see Max.’’ Then, feeling that perhaps she had been rude, Chris added, in the same mumbled, noncommittal voice that Nicko had used when given the monkey: ‘‘Thank you, all the same.’’
‘‘Sit down,’’ Maisie said. ‘‘You look all in.’’
‘‘Gosh, I feel it too.’’ Chris slumped into a chair and again put her unattractively large hands to her greying temples.
‘‘Headache?’’ Maisie said. She clicked open her bag: ‘‘Let me give you one of these pills. They’re the latest thing.’’
‘‘I don’t want a pill,’’ Chris exclaimed petulantly. Her voice broke: ‘‘I haven’t slept for nights—not a wink.’’
‘‘Neither have I,’’ Maisie said in a voice which was intended to soothe. ‘‘It’s this weather. Wait until we have this rain.’’
‘‘Oh, it’s not the weather!’’ Chris flung out, creaking from one side to another in the wicker-chair.
Mrs. Bennett came across and said softly: ‘‘It’s money, isn’t it!’’; and her sympathy was so evident that Chris’s whole manner at once changed. Hopelessly, she confessed:
‘‘Yes, it’s about money. I’ve been such a fool. Oh, I can’t tell you about it all. But I want Max’s advice.’’ She picked up the branch which had snapped off the tree and gave herself two or three stinging cuts across the hand. ‘‘He understands that sort of thing. I don’t, and Tiny doesn’t. But I’ve been such a fool—such a fool.’’
‘‘What have you done, Aunt Chris?’’ Colin asked with interest. But a sudden gust of wind scattered the cards with which he had begun to play patience and he had to hobble after them. ‘‘Oh, help me, Pamela!’’ he shouted. ‘‘They’ll be blown into the street. You know I can’t walk properly yet.’’ So Chris never explained; and Maisie, though she had wanted to ask the same question herself, did not dare to repeat it.
Suddenly they were all startled by Pamela shouting: ‘‘Nicko, you wicked, wicked boy! What have you done? Nicko!’’
The child burst into paroxysms of tears.
‘‘What on earth’s the matter?’’ Mrs. Bennett asked. Only Chris was not interested in the scene, sitting with one hand over her eyes while the corners of her mouth sagged slowly downward.
‘‘It’s the monkey,’’ Pamela explained. ‘‘ He’s thrown it down.
Mummy and Colonel Ross were coming out of the swing-doors and he threw it down. He threw it down.’’
They were never to discover whether by the gesture, Nicko had intended to reject Maisie’s gift, to make his mother and Frank bring the monkey up to him, or to strike them with the first missile that came to his hands. He screamed, he wept, but he would not explain.
It was Rodolfo who at last appeared with the monkey.
‘‘Your mother gave this to me to bring up to you,’’ he explained. ‘‘We met outside the hotel.’’ He bowed and smiled to each of the ladies in turn, saying: ‘‘Good evening’’ in his fearful English pronunciation. ‘‘ Well,’’ he said to Colin. ‘‘Shall we go?’’
‘‘You can’t go out in this weather,’’ Mrs. Bennett said.
‘‘It’s not raining. And we have our mackintoshes,’’ Colin replied. ‘‘And umbrellas, and goloshes. Where’s the harm?’’
‘‘It’s dangerous for you on the slippery pavements with that iron.’’
‘‘But Rodolfo will support me—and Pamela.’’
Mrs. Bennett shrugged her shoulders: ‘‘Oh, do as you please.’’
‘‘When you say it in that voice, it means ‘Don’t do it’,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘Now we can’t go.’’
‘‘Yes, go, go, go,’’ Mrs. Bennett urged. ‘‘Go by all means.’’ For suddenly she had changed her mind, as she so often did. ‘‘Yes, go,’’ she repeated. ‘‘A little rain will do no harm.’’
‘‘That was easy,’’ Pamela whispered excitedly, as they made their way downstairs. ‘‘When I saw the rain coming, I was afraid she’d say no. I was crossing my fingers all the time. I knew it was our only chance before we went away.… You’re cold,’’ she said to Colin.
‘‘No, I’m not.’’
‘‘You’re shivering.’’
‘‘Am I?’’
‘‘It must be nerves,’’ she said laughing. ‘‘You do get het-up over the smallest things. Look at Rodolfo and myself. We’re quite calm.… How are we going to go?’’
‘‘In the filo-bus.’’
‘‘What’s that?’’
‘‘Oh, it’s like a trolley-bus. It goes from San Marco.’’
‘‘Can you walk that far?’’
‘‘Of course I can.’’ Normally Colin complained if he had to walk a hundred yards with the iron on his leg; but his desire to see where Enzo worked had miraculously stiffened his courage.
Suddenly the rain descended; and seemed, not merely to descend, but to rise from the pavement, spattering their legs as they jostled through the crowds. A mushroom-growth of umbrellas covered the Signoria, and the city’s archways were dense with figures who peered out hopelessly at a black sky fissured from time to time by jagged strokes of lightning. When the thunder followed it seemed as if the whole city were subsiding under the rain. The three children hurried with bowed heads, jumping puddles, shouting to each other, and making extravagant detours to avoid the cascades of water which poured, at every few yards, from broken or blocked water-courses. They were in the highest spirits.
‘‘Are we going too fast for you?’’ Pamela shouted to her brother, thrusting her umbrella between two people who were approaching along the pavement.
‘‘No, no,’’ Colin panted and laughed at the same time.
‘‘I can manage.’’ But as he said the words, one of the two advancing umbrellas pressed against him, his iron slipped, and he fell sideways in the gutter. ‘‘Oh, I’m soaked,’’ he moaned. ‘‘Look! Right to the knees. And all this sleeve, too.’’
‘‘We’d better go back,’�
� Rodolfo said.
‘‘Yes, you must change,’’ Pamela agreed. ‘‘We can’t go on.’’
‘‘We must go on,’’ Colin said with a determination that neither Pamela nor Rodolfo could ever remember him to have displayed before. ‘‘I’m all right. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Come on!’’ He hobbled ahead of them, beckoning at the same time.
‘‘But, Colin——’’
‘‘Oh, come on! We’ll only get more wet if we argue.’’
‘‘You know you’re frightened of lightning, too,’’ Pamela said; and at the same moment a fiery arrow seemed to dart downward to the topmost point of Giotto’s Campanile. ‘‘Oh, Colin!’’ she wailed. But her voice was lost in the staccato rap-rap-rap that followed.
All at once Rodolfo began to shout, ‘‘ Run, run, run!’’ and without waiting for them, he careered down the street. A trolley-bus clattered and hissed out of the darkness, sparks spinning downward from its black arm and Rodolfo, having gripped a handle, swung himself up on to a precarious foothold outside the platform, shouting, ‘‘Quick, quick, quick.’’ He extended an arm, but it was an obviously hopeless attempt, since the doors remained closed.
‘‘I can’t!’’ Colin shouted, and muttered: ‘‘ The fool! The bloody fool.’’
Rodolfo flung himself downward, landing in a puddle so that water splashed outward, and then sprinted back to join his friends, with a panted: ‘‘I forgot. I’m sorry. I forgot about your leg, Colin.’’
‘‘Anyway we couldn’t all three have hung on to that one bar,’’ Pamela said.
‘‘The next bus doesn’t come for twenty minutes. That’s why I ran.’’
‘‘Twenty minutes!’’ Colin exclaimed. ‘‘But I’m soaked already.’’
‘‘We can shelter,’’ Pamela sail.
‘‘And get pneumonia. I’m going to walk.’’
Rodolfo laughed: ‘‘ Walk! It’ll take you half an hour.’’ His usually smooth black hair had tumbled over his forehead and he now put out a tongue to catch the raindrops which trickled from it down his nose. He was wearing shorts and a waterproof U. S. army jacket which reached no further than his thighs. His thin, muscular legs were splashed with mud.
‘‘Oh, what are we to do,’’ Pamela exclaimed, for once at a loss how to deal with a situation. ‘‘We’ll have to wait, that’s all. Or go home. Wouldn’t it be better if we went home?’’ The hair which straggled from her green oilskin cap now looked black. ‘‘ Colin, I think we’d better go home.’’
‘‘You can, if you like. I’m going on.’’ But his spirit, so inflexible till this moment, now began to droop. He could feel a cold, clammy chill move from his shoulders slowly down his spine. He looked desperately about him and then: ‘‘I know,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll take a cab.’’
‘‘A cab?’’
‘‘Yes, one of those fiacres.’’
‘‘And how are we going to pay for it?’’ Pamela asked sarcastically. ‘‘Oh, don’t let’s stand here and argue!’’ she exclaimed before any answer came, and retreated into a doorway.
‘‘I’ll pay him,’’ Colin said, joining her. ‘‘Don’t worry.’’
‘‘Mille lire,’’ Rodolfo said, haying guessed what they were discussing. ‘‘Let’s go another day.’’
‘‘But don’t you see, there won’t be another day,’’ Colin exclaimed in renewed exasperation. ‘‘Hi!’’ He beckoned with one arm from the gleaming oilskin sleeve off which drops of rain cascaded downwards. ‘‘Hi, there!’’
Rodolfo put both fingers to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle.
The hood of the cab which trundled towards them looked like an inverted antique coal-scuttle, and in spite of its protection, the rain had made the seats so damp that their worn green leather might have been moss. An old man, huddled under an umbrella which he had fixed in a bracket beside the front seat, leant forward to hear the address, his trilby hat emptying a noisy stream of water on to the floor of the carriage.
‘‘Quanta costa?’’ Rodolfo asked.
The man rattled some phlegm in the inmost recesses of his being, hawked for it without success, and then at a second attempt, succeeded in voiding it on to the pavement where it lay like a blue piece of gristle.
‘‘Mille cinquecento.’’
‘‘Troppo,’’ Rodolfo said, and the two began to haggle. Meanwhile Colin and Pamela had already climbed in.
‘‘Oh, do leave it,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘ Let’s get moving.’’
‘‘As you wish,’’ Rodolfo said huffily, with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘‘It’s all the same to me. I’m not paying.’’
Pamela laughed. ‘‘I still don’t know who is going to pay. Colin, how are you going to do it?’’
Colin unpinned the tie-pin which held together the two flaps of his collar, running under the tie: ‘‘I’ll give him this.’’
‘‘But you can’t!’’ Pamela exclaimed. ‘‘Mother gave it to you for your birthday.’’
‘‘I don’t care.’’
‘‘She’s sure to notice that you’ve lost it. She always notices that sort of thing.’’
‘‘Let her. It’s not my fault if the tie-pin she gives me falls off.’’
‘‘Perhaps he won’t take it,’’ Pamela said.
‘‘He won’t get anything else.’’
‘‘I still think it’s wrong.’’
For the rest of the drive they sat in a silence broken only by Rodolfo whistling ‘‘Auld Lang Syne’’ in desolatingly slow tempo. Colin still clutched the pin. From time to time one or other of them would peer either out of the small back-window or round the vast extinguishing hood to see if the rain slackened: but the sky remained livid, the water fell vertically out of it with a destroying malevolence. Stones rattled down the hill-road up which they were now driving; water-courses appeared, fissuring the surface, as if there had been an earthquake; combined with the swish of rain and the click of stones there was the roar of water pressing through the gutters. A flash of lightning lit up Rodolfo’s face, his eyes gleaming like a cat’s, and then the whole carriage seemed to rock from side to side in the reverberation that followed.
Suddenly Pamela began to cry.
‘‘What’s the matter?’’ Colin asked irritably.
‘‘I don’t know. I can’t help it.’’
She pressed her damp cheek against the dry, creaking interior of the hood so hard that when she at last removed it one of the struts had made a red, diagonal furrow. She continued to cry softly until they reached the wrought-iron gates of the villa.
‘‘Tell him not to go up the drive,’’ Colin said to Rodolfo. ‘‘We’d better walk from here, just in case. And quickly! Quickly!’’ he repeated as Rodolfo began to argue with the old man about the tie-pin.
At first they argued whether it was gold, and then they argued about the propriety of a tie-pin being accepted instead of lire; finally they argued because Rodolfo maintained that the tie-pin was worth more than the agreed thousand lire and that the old man should therefore give them some change. Perhaps he would have gained even this last point, if Colin and Pamela had not been impatient.
As the cab creaked, rattled and swayed from their sight, all three of them felt suddenly and overwhelmingly forlorn. Even Rodolfo was subdued as he said: ‘‘That pin was worth five thousand. You were a couple of fools.’’
‘‘Let’s get moving.’’ Colin began to limp up the steep path, picking his way over the zigzag streams of water, and slowly the two others followed. A single light burned in the house, and glancing up when they paused for breath, Rodolfo and Pamela exclaimed together: ‘‘Enzo!’’ They pointed to the window. Oblivious of his visitors, since from where he stood they were all three in darkness, he peered at the storm; one hand held the curtain while the other grasped a duster.
Pamela laughed and the boys joined in. The spectacle of Enzo at the window, staring out and not realizing that they were staring at him, filled each of them with a hidden
rush of power. Rodolfo tapped on the window; and Enzo who by then had seen them, motioned them, finger on lips, not to made a noise. He had been warned that they would come that day but had decided, with a mingling of relief and disappointment, that the storm would keep them away. Now he did not know whether to be pleased or angry.
‘‘Wipe your shoes,’’ he said as he opened the garden-room door. ‘‘On this mat. Oh, take care!’’ Rodolfo had stumbled into a heap of garden-pots, most of them cracked or broken, and they were now rolling noisily about the marble floor. All of them, even Enzo, sniggered: but it was more from nerves than amusement.
‘‘Is she out?’’ Pamela whispered.
Rodolfo repeated the girl’s halting Italian phrase in a louder voice and Enzo said, ‘‘Sh!’’ Then he said: ‘‘Yes, she’s gone out. She only left about ten minutes ago. The car wouldn’t start, because the garage leaks and there was water in the engine.’’ Again they all sniggered. ‘‘But Maria is here. So you must be careful.’’
‘‘You said she was deaf and blind,’’ Rodolfo reminded him.
‘‘She notices things, in spite of that.’’
‘‘Oh, it is cold,’’ Pamela said, shuddering. She stared down at the alternate black-and-white lozenges of the hall which seemed to carry their burden of potted umbrellas and orange, trailing plants into a damp infinity. ‘‘How big,’’ she sighed. She touched one of the plants and pulled a face: ‘‘It’s dead. It’s all mildewed. They ought to be cleared out.’’
In a small room, piled with back numbers of the Manchester Guardian, Time and Tide and Staffordshire local papers, all yellowing under dust, Rodolfo had found a bag of golf-clubs, and was now swinging a mashie back and forth.
‘‘Mind!’’ Colin warned. But it was too late and a bulb tinkled downwards.
‘‘You fool, you bloody fool!’’ Enzo exclaimed.
It took them many minutes to clear up the glass and to decide from where they could take a bulb without it being noticed. At last they picked on one of the many lavatories which could not be used because they were out of order, and Rodolfo did not fail to make his inevitable joke about the stench, holding his nose between his fingers.