by Francis King
‘‘Show us the house,’’ Colin said.
It was vast and depressing, full of dust, old photographs, horses’ hooves mounted in silver, Tauchnitz novels, typewriters, gramophones and clocks which no longer worked, and stacks of old papers. In short it was just as Maisie had described it. Yet Colin felt disappointed. He had expected something more, though he could not have said what, and as he went round the house with the others, it was as if, with a growing despair, he were seeking for something which he now guessed he would never find.
‘‘I’m not allowed in there,’’ Enzo said, pointing to a door. ‘‘That’s her bedroom. Maria always cleans it.’’
‘‘Can’t we go in?’’ Pamela asked.
‘‘It’s locked.’’
‘‘Another key would fit it,’’ Rodolfo said.
‘‘But no one’s allowed in,’’ Enzo objected.
‘‘Oh, come on! Try this key.’’
‘‘No.’’ The Florentine stood with legs astride as if to bar the way.
‘‘Try this key,’’ Colin said, pulling one from a hideous mahogany armoire.
Pamela gave a high-pitched laugh which reverberated strangely down the corridor. ‘‘It’s like the story of Bluebeard.… Try the key, Enzo.’’ She covered her ears: ‘‘Oh, this thunder! I do wish it would stop.’’
‘‘Yes, try the key,’’ Colin said.
Reluctantly the Florentine pushed the key into the lock and turned it from side to side. ‘‘ No good,’’ he said.
‘‘Let me try.’’ Rodolfo began to rattle the key so violently that Pamela had to grasp him by the arm in order to make him stop:
‘‘There’s no point. You’ll only break the lock. It obviously doesn’t fit.’’
Meanwhile Colin had fetched another key from the door of the bathroom, and inserting it, discovered that it turned without difficulty. ‘‘It works, it works!’’ he exclaimed excitedly. He opened the door only a few inches, as if afraid to take advantage of this success, and it was Rodolfo who in the end pushed it wide and swaggered his way in.
‘‘What’s that?’’ Pamela said, clutching Colin’s hand.
‘‘What’s what?’’
‘‘That sound.’’
‘‘What sound?’’
‘‘A sort of whining.’’
They both listened in the doorway, the colour seeping away from their faces, until Pamela called:
‘‘Enzo?’’
The Florentine now joined them: ‘‘Yes?’’
‘‘Listen.’’
For a moment he, too, seemed to share their alarm as he stood listening with his head slightly on one side. Then he laughed: ‘‘Mister,’’ he said.
‘‘Mister?’’ Colin repeated.
Enzo went to a door at the far end of the room, and opening it, whistled to Lady Newton’s spaniel; the dog at once creaked slowly out of its basket and, cringing so much that its tail scraped the floor, came up to each of them in turn, its ears laid back, and rubbed a sand-paper tongue over their hands and bare legs. The two American children began to laugh hilariously in their relief, until Enzo silenced them with a repeated ‘‘Sh, sh, sh!’’
Meanwhile Rodolfo was going round the room, opening cupboards, pulling out drawers, and peering at the innumerable photographs, mostly of the same eton-cropped woman with, the face of an intelligent dray-horse. One by one the others joined him in this exploration.
‘‘That must be Amberson Lane,’’ Colin said, pointing to the dray-horse.
Pamela examined the photograph in the Edwardian silver frame: ‘‘She’s everywhere,’’ she said.
In one drawer Rodolfo had found a box of musty cigars and in another a depilatory; but there was little else to excite their interest. He made them laugh by lying on the mahogany four-poster bed, a cigar in his mouth, though Enzo was too much afraid that the coverlet would be muddied fully to appreciate the joke. Jumping off the bed, Rodolfo went to the dressing-table and began to dab his cheeks with rouge and smear his lips with lipstick: then, putting one hand on his hip, he minced and grimaced about the room and spoke in a falsetto voice. Again the two English children laughed, while the Florentine tried to restrain them. The dog had meanwhile taken Rodolfo’s place on the bed, and was scratching its tattered ear; but whenever the lightning flashed it lowered its greying muzzle on to its paws and began a whining like the noise of telegraph-wires in a high wind.
‘‘This drawer is locked,’’ Colin suddenly announced. He still felt that he had been somehow cheated by what he had found in the house, though everything was exactly as Maisie had described it to him. ‘‘I can’t open it. Let me have that key.’’
It was a marble-topped console table, as elaborately ugly as the rest of the furniture, with a single deep drawer. Key after key was tried; and with each failure their desire to see inside became the more importunate. Even Enzo, who had at first tried to get them away, now ran down the corridor fetching keys from rooms that lay under dust-sheets, from cupboards that filled the landings on the disused upper storeys, and even from Lady Newton’s desk in her study below. But not one would fit. Rodolfo fetched a hairpin from the silver tray, covered with mythical Indian monsters, that lay on the dressing-table, but even that failed.
Such was their excitement that they did not notice that the electric light was shuddering like a candle in a high wind. ‘‘I know,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘Couldn’t we take off the top. This marble unscrews.’’
‘‘No, no,’’ Enzo protested in alarm.
‘‘But why not?’’ Colin urged. ‘‘We can screw it on again. We won’t do any harm.’’
Now, with its alternations of bright and dark, the lamp made it appear as if the room were a railway-carriage rushing at speed through one brief tunnel after another: an illusion which the incessant roar of the storm served only to fortify. Enzo was still protesting:
‘‘It’s better to leave it. There won’t be anything there. What’s the point?’’
But without heeding him Rodolfo produced a penknife and began to loosen one after another of the large, brass screws. He was working on the last when, with a tremendous crack of thunder, overhead as it seemed, the light for the last time shuddered, and then went out. Pamela gave a small wail: ‘‘What are we to do? There must have been a fuse.’’
Peering from the window, Rodolfo said: ‘‘No, all Florence is dark. It’s the whole electric system.’’ He laughed: ‘‘If it doesn’t rain, they cut the electricity. And if it does rain, the electricity ceases altogether.’’ He clicked his fingers at Enzo: ‘‘Fetch a candle.… And shut up you!’’ he shouted at the dog which had set up a piteous, high-pitched whining. ‘‘Shut up!’’
‘‘Where can I find a candle?’’ Enzo said.
‘‘There was a torch in that drawer over there,’’ Colin remembered. ‘‘Perhaps it still works.’’
Pamela fetched it and a feeble glimmer was reflected from the marble of the table, a small S of fire which burned fitfully as if buried deep. ‘‘That’ll do,’’ Rodolfo said, commencing at the last screw. ‘‘ Now give me a hand with the top,’’ he panted. ‘‘ Enzo!’’ He looked, round and when the Florentine did not come to his assistance, let out an expletive. ‘‘Colin!’’
Between them they removed the marble slab and carried it over to the bed where they put it beside the dog which was still whimpering softly. Pamela shone the worm-like wriggle of light into the interior and said, as the others crowded round her: ‘‘Cardboard boxes, that’s all.’’
‘‘But what’s inside?’’ Colin said.
‘‘Open one,’’ his sister suggested and almost dropped the torch as a flash of lightning for a second restored the daylight.
‘‘You open one. I don’t think it’s right.’’
‘‘Oh, don’t be silly.’’ But still she did not move, and it was Rodolfo who at last took the largest of the boxes and eased off the lid. ‘‘What is it?’’ she said; and they all peered together, as the torch lit a row of neatly pa
cked glass phials.
‘‘It must be a medicine,’’ Colin said.
‘‘This one’s the same.’’ Pamela had jerked open another of the boxes. ‘‘What have you got there, Enzo?’’
‘‘I don’t know.’’
‘‘Let’s see,’’ Pamela said, while Colin urged at the same moment: ‘‘Perhaps we should put them back. We ought to go, Pamela. They’re just a lot of medicines.’’ At first he had felt cheated; but now, having discovered something of which Maisie had said nothing, his one desire was to turn back to the familiar and ordinary. ‘‘ Put them back,’’ he repeated. ‘‘Screw the top back.’’
‘‘Not on your life. This has just begun to be interesting. What is it, Rodolfo?’’
Rodolfo held up a hypodermic syringe, while Pamela shone the torch on to his hand and the gleaming metal. ‘‘Take care you don’t prick yourself,’’ she said.
‘‘What is it?’’ Enzo said. He had never seen one before.
‘‘Oh, they give you injections with it—doctors do. Isn’t that what it is, Colin?’’
But: ‘‘Leave it, leave it!’’ was all her brother’s answer.
‘‘Dentists use them, too. You must have had an injection at the dentist.’’
Suddenly the dog heaved itself off the bed, like a seal entering water, and waddled to the door where it began to scratch with both paws, whining and at last yelping as it did so. They all stared in amazement, a chill sweat breaking out over them, until they heard the click-click, at first faint, then louder, of feet climbing stairs.
‘‘It’s her! It’s her!’’ Pamela exclaimed in panic. ‘‘Quick—put the thing away.’’ And because Rodolfo still stood dumbfounded, the syringe in his hand, she grabbed it from him and herself put it in its box. But before she could restore many of the other boxes, the door had been opened.
‘‘Enzo!’’ a voice said indignantly. Then, peering at the torch’s worm of fire: ‘‘Who’s there? Who are you?’’ Lady Newton cried in a mingling of fear and indignation. ‘‘Who let you in? What are you doing here?’’
But they were all afraid to move.
At that moment a flash of lightning revealed the four cowering children, the boys behind Pamela who seemed least afraid; the rifled drawer; the scattered cardboard boxes, out of one of which Colin had taken a glass phial. ‘‘ How dare you!’’ Lady Newton said, still in Italian. ‘‘ What is the meaning of this?’’
‘‘It was our fault,’’ Pamela replied in English. Her voice broke the sentence in two, but with a gulp she continued: ‘‘It was nothing to do with Enzo. We insisted on coming. We wanted to see your villa.’’
‘‘English!’’ Lady Newton exclaimed; and as she said the word the light slowly flickered upwards, making them all blink, until it had returned to its usual brightness. ‘‘And so you’ve been breaking into my possessions.’’ She turned to Enzo and suddenly the small, timid-seeming woman in the dripping burberry and tam-o’-shanter began to tremble and go white with rage: a stream of Italian poured from her mouth, as if she were vomiting.
‘‘Via!’’ she concluded. ‘‘Via!’’ And then in English: ‘‘Out! Get out of here! And you’re bloody lucky I don’t call the police! Go on! Out!’’ As she shouted at them, one of her gardener’s-boy hands, with the bitten nails, never ceased to pluck at the clammy folds of the vast black umbrella she was carrying with her. ‘‘Don’t let me see you again,’’ she shouted after Enzo in Italian. ‘‘And you won’t get last week’s salary, nor this week’s. Not a penny! Do you understand?’’
They all felt too sick with fear to say anything until, white-faced and soaked, they found themselves on the bus. Then Colin said: ‘‘You were wonderful, Pamela,’’ with a mingling of admiration for her and disgust for himself.
‘‘Wonderful?’’
‘‘The way you told her that it was our fault, not Enzo’s. And then going back to speak to her and leaving us in the porch.’’
‘‘She wouldn’t listen, it wasn’t any use.’’
‘‘But that’s not the point—whether it was any use. The point is that you did it. And I didn’t,’’ he added in a low voice. He knew he had betrayed Enzo.
‘‘I expect you would have done it if I hadn’t been there,’’ Pamela said, in a clumsy attempt at comfort. ‘‘The awful thing is that we’ve lost Enzo his job.’’
‘‘That was my fault. It was I who made you go. You and Rodolfo would never have gone if I hadn’t been on at you both. Pamela, what am I to do?’’
‘‘What do you mean?’’
‘‘To make it all right. I’ve got to do something for Enzo. Well, I have, haven’t I?’’
‘‘We’ll think about it later. When we’re less wet.’’ She drew her habitually filthy handkerchief out of a pocket and began to pull through it strand after strand of her hair. ‘‘What interests me is that medicine. What do you think it was?’’
But this was the problem whose solution at that moment seemed to Colin the least important of all.
Chapter Twenty-Four
WHEN the two English children had said good-bye to Rodolfo and Enzo, who returned to their houses, Pamela remarked: ‘‘Heaven knows what we’re going to tell them when we get back. There’ll be hot baths and hot drinks and all the usual fuss.’’
But Colin was not listening. Allied to the misery of damp clothes, and dwarfing it to nothing, was the knowledge that he, and no one else, had been responsible for losing Enzo his job. Nor did the irony escape him that in his long waking fantasies it was the Florentine for whom he always performed some service against impossible odds. A fine service this! The rain had now ceased and the late evening was revealed in misty pinks, blues and yellows; there was only one cloud in the sky and it seemed not to move above a new moon which lay faint and far in the west. There was a sense of relaxation, as after some tremendous contest; it seemed as if the whole earth had spent itself and had now sunk exhausted. Only the river still thrashed turbulent and muddy under the quiet sky.
‘‘Tomorrow it will be cool,’’ Pamela said, ‘‘and then it will be hot again. It will be as if we had never had the rain. What are you thinking about?’’
‘‘Nothing.’’
‘‘You’re worrying.’’
‘‘No, I’m not.’’
‘‘Well, I am.’’
But she had no cause to worry about anything the grownups might say to them, for their truancy during the storm had been swallowed up in the far more momentous events of that evening. When the children reached the hotel, they at once went up to their grandmother’s room and were astonished to find it full of people. Chris lay on the bed with her face to the wall, while Mrs. Bennett sat beside her and Max stood near. Tiny was staring moodily out on to the terrace.
‘‘Oh, there you are, children,’’ Mrs. Bennett said absently. She was treating them as if they had been in the hotel all through the storm, and having been prepared for her anxious scoldings, they both felt a vague disappointment, even a resentment. ‘‘You’d better run along for the moment. I’ll come and see you later. We’re busy just now.’’
‘‘Ought we to have hot baths?’’ Pamela asked. ‘‘ We were both drenched through.’’ She was determined that the scene should approximate more closely to what she had imagined.
‘‘Oh, did you get wet? Yes, have hot baths, that’s a good idea. But run along now. You’ll find Maisie in her room, if you want anything.’’
‘‘What has happened?’’ Pamela burst into Maisie Brandon’s solitude. ‘‘ I’m sorry, were you busy?’’
‘‘That’s all right, my pet,’’ Maisie assured her: she typed two more words of the article at which she had been working and then said: ‘‘Such a hoo-ha. All about poor Chris.’’
‘‘Yes, but what is it?’’ Colin demanded. ‘‘Tell us, do tell us.’’
‘‘Well, I don’t know that I ought to. I don’t know what your grandmother would say.’’ But Maisie was bursting to confide in them. ‘‘ It’s not real
ly for ears as young as yours.’’
‘‘Oh, go on, Maisie.’’ Pamela put an arm round the older woman’s thin, bony shoulders. ‘‘Tell us, please tell us.’’
‘‘Well, my dears——’’ Maisie began; and with her forefinger she picked out another two words on the typewriter before she continued. ‘‘It’s all rather a sad story,’’ she said. ‘‘And it must go no further. Promise?’’
‘‘Yes, promise, promise,’’ they both said excitedly.
‘‘Well, poor Chris has made an awful fool of herself. It seems she’s been lending the glamour boy money to pay his hotel bill—oh, and for a lot of other purposes, too. She soon ran through her poor little fifty pounds so she started cashing cheques. That’s dangerous, of course, she could get into a hell of a row. But that’s not the worst. It seems that last night she lent him more money to pay his week’s bill, and this morning he upped and went early. He just can’t be found. And now your father has returned from Pisa and there’s a letter for him, from Stockholm, saying that there’s no such Count—he just doesn’t exist. So poor Chris will never see her money again, if you ask me.… Of course she was terribly, terribly taken with him,’’ she added. ‘‘Which doesn’t help any.’’
Meanwhile Chris was still sobbing on Mrs. Bennett’s bed.
Tiny turned from his gloomy contemplation of the terrace to exclaim in exasperation: ‘‘What the hell are we waiting for? Why don’t we tell the police? Time’s the important factor. The sooner they get on to the bastard——’’
‘‘Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t!’’ Chris wailed.
‘‘Well, be reasonable,’’ Tiny said. ‘‘He’s taken a cool two hundred off you. What I can’t understand is that you never even told me that you were cashing those cheques—and cashing them with shady characters to whom he introduced you. You must have been barmy! Hang it all, if they’d cash your cheques, why in the world’s name couldn’t they cash his?’’
‘‘Don’t!’’ Chris screamed, and then covering her ears with her hands, she sobbed hysterically: ‘‘I won’t listen to you! I knew you wouldn’t understand. You never do. Oh, why did I ever marry you? I might have known.’’