by Francis King
At that moment, Colin longed to be folded in that embrace; and yet, at the same time, he was filled with a savage pride which would not let him yield. He could not understand it, and he was frustrated almost to the point of tears.
‘‘When I’ve had my bathe, let’s go for a walk, shall we?’’ The iron had been removed from the boy’s leg three or four days previously. ‘‘ Just us two. Shall we?’’
‘‘I thought I’d go to the cinema.’’
‘‘The cinema!’’
‘‘They’re showing Johnny Belinda—I saw as we drove through. It begins at three. It’s a good way of learning Italian.’’
‘‘But not on a day like this,’’ Max protested.
‘‘All days are like this in Italy.’’
Max gave a not altogether happy laugh. ‘‘ That’s true. But you could have gone to the cinema in Florence, couldn’t you? There’s not much point in driving all the way out here——’’
‘‘Oh, well, if you want me to sit on the beach all day!’’
‘‘Don’t be silly. Do just as you like.’’
‘‘I shall need some money.’’
‘‘Yes. How much?’’ Max reached for his trousers and put a hand in one pocket.
‘‘Two hundred and fifty lire, I expect. That’s what it usually is.’’
‘‘Well, here’s three-fifty.’’
Colin took the notes and pushed them into his shirt-pocket, mumbling, ‘‘Thank you’’ almost inaudibly.
‘‘Enjoy yourself!’’ Max called after him.
When the boy did not answer, or even turn, his father dropped the trousers which he had been holding, as if his whole firm, sinewy body were oppressed with a sudden fatigue. Then he straightened himself, and began to sprint over the glaring sand, scattering a fine drifting wash behind him.
Lena and Pamela both raised their arms at his coming, and shrieking and laughing, began to scoop at the water and splash it towards him. But he took no notice. He plunged into a breaker, and then with long, powerful strokes swam far, far out where he knew that neither of them could reach him. Then he lay on his back, floating, his eyes closed and his face strangely white against the redness of the hair on the rest of his body.
Meanwhile Colin was tramping up the innumerable steps which wormed between heavily scented bushes of oleander and syringa, to the glitter of die town above him. His breath came short and he was on the verge of tears. He stopped and looked back behind him, and saw Lena and Pamela still playing their games and Max, barely discernible, like a log of wood in the deep, distant blueness. Nicko was building a sand-castle; but he had started it too near the incoming tide, and each time that a breaker pounded downwards, he would scurry away in terror. It made Colin smile. Mrs. Bennett he could not now see, for with the moving of the sun the shadows of the two rocks had slowly opened like some vast, purple jaws and she, yellow sun-hat and all, had been swallowed downward. If he strained his eyes, he thought he could just see her; but it was something infinitely blurred and transparent, like a bad image on a television-screen. Suddenly he wanted to shout to her, for he felt, he did not know why, that she would never come out. She would dissolve there, in the shadow, as jelly-fish dissolve in the sun, and when they went to look for her they would find nothing but a pool of sticky liquid and the yellow straw hat. He felt sick with dismay at the thought; and it was only by an effort of will that he at last conquered the irrationality of such a mood. For, of course, she was still there, he told himself; and of course they would find her.
In the main street a woman was standing with a boy of four or five asleep in her arms. She seemed only a girl herself, though her swollen figure made it obvious she was expecting again to be mother. She had a small, puckered face, greasy black hair, and clothes which were almost repellent in their filthiness and disrepair. She carried the child towards a smartly dressed woman, and then when she hurried past, towards a man, an obvious tourist from his camera and binoculars, who hesitated, looked her up and down, both nostrils twitching in his long, bony face, and eventually exclaimed: ‘‘ Via! Via!’’ in a high-pitched, American accent. At this she began to carry her burden over the road, heedless of a car which all but ran her over. The brakes screeched and there was a burning smell of rubber on the hot, heavy air; the driver shouted at her, in Italian, and when she said nothing, he drove on, apparently disappointed. The child had woken and now began crying, fumbling with one hand to grasp her breast while she tried to pull him away from it.
‘‘Colin was watching the whole scene, with a fascinated horror. At last, despairing of her attempts to control the child, she unfastened the torn, black dress and, retreating into a doorway, allowed him to suck from the breast. He was so avid that he paid no heed to the flies which she lethargically attempted to brush from his eyelids at intervals of one or two minutes. Her feet were bare.
Colin went across to her and held out the three hundred and fifty lire his father had given him. She stared back, but either because she was astonished at this generosity or because she needed both hands to support the child, she made no attempt to take the notes from him. The child was making greedy, gulping noises, its palms opening and shutting convulsively as it sucked. Colin let the notes flutter downward to the woman’s bare feet and then hurried away, before she put out a hand to tuck them into some recess of her filthy clothing. All at once he had lost the desire to see the film; and indeed, he now wondered if he had ever wished to see it. He had wished, from some irrational cause, to alienate himself from his father, and the cinema, on such a day and after they had been driven so many miles to the sea, had seemed the best way to do so.
There was a square of grass, divided by two intersecting gravel paths into four triangles, and Colin went and sat on one of its wooden benches. Its paint gave forth a vaguely unpleasant smell as it burned in the afternoon sun. There were few people about. There was a lethargy over the whole town, and the girl who sold tickets in a cage in the cinema was asleep on her elbow. Two dogs circled each other, sniffing, and then from sheer weariness, each went to sleep under a separate bench. Colin scratched his ankles where some gnats had evidently bitten him and stared at the dust-grey tops of the trees round the square.
He thought of his father, floating far out in cool depths of blue, of the woman who suffered the voraciously sucking child, and then of his own stupid rebelliousness when his father had wished only to be kind. Finally, and as it were as a last clue, he thought of how Enzo had described to him the scene of his mother rubbing his back with oil.… Perhaps he would have wept, if he had not felt so tired. He lay full-length on the bench, and stared at the glaring sky; and at last fell asleep, and dreamed of Frank Ross.
Throughout the drive back, Max ignored Colin; and though he wished to apologize, the boy could not bring himself to do so.
‘‘You were silly, going to a cinema, after we’d come all this way,’’ Pamela said.
‘‘Oh, shut up.’’
‘‘Well, it was silly, wasn’t it? And the sea was so wonderful.’’
‘‘Mind your own business.’’
‘‘You are in a good temper.’’
Colin turned from her and looked out of the window, his eyes filling with tears. Mrs. Bennett continued to snore in the other corner, with Nicko on her knees. Lena, in front, turned to Max:
‘‘It was a lovely day, Mr. Westfield. I can’t remember ever having enjoyed myself so much before. You are so kind to me,’’ she added, her voice strangely vibrating as she clutched at her hair; the water had taken all the grease out of it and it was blowing across her face. ‘‘So very, very kind.’’
Max only replied shortly: ‘‘I’m glad that you liked it.’’
When they reached Florence, everyone but Colin again thanked Max. Colin saw his father glance at him, while the others exclaimed ‘‘Lovely … delightful … so kind …’’ and he knew, with a mingling of shame and devotion, that Max was not listening to them, but waiting for him. And he could say nothing, nothing a
t all. The words would not come. At last Max turned away, and the opportunity was over.
Later that evening, after he had changed for dinner, Colin decided to go and apologize to his father. But still his courage failed him. In the end he wrote a brief note, in the over-correct, stilted English he always tended to use in correspondence, and having waited until an hour when he knew that Max habitually went down to the bar for a cocktail, he made his way to his father’s room. The door was ajar; and the boy experienced a brief thrill of pleasure as he looked at his father’s ivory-backed brushes; his typewriter on the table, with the neat stacks of letters all about it; his shoes, with their wooden trees, in a gleaming row on the bottom of the half-open cupboard, the packet of cigarettes he had thrown on the dressing-table, and the discarded clothes left, here and there, for the valet to pick up. And everywhere there was the peculiar male smell which he always associated with Max; the smell of a certain kind of soap, and of tobacco, and of something less definable.
Colin tiptoed about the room, examining one object after another; then having taken a cigarette from the packet to give to Enzo later, he glanced at the first letter on one of the stacks.
… You were so kind, and I shall never, never forget what you did for me, all that money and not only that, your consideration and understanding just how I felt—and trying to make Tiny see what hell I was going through. Not that you had much success there! But I mustn’t complain, must I?—After all, I brought it all on my own self. And it was worth it, of that I am sure. Whatever I have suffered—and God alone knows what mental and physical torture these last days have been—whatever I have gone through, I have no regrets. And no hatred for Béngt, none whatever. Only love—now isn’t that crazy? But it has all been so sad, coming back to the house …
Suddenly he put down the thick sheet of dark blue note-paper, with its large, rambling characters underlined with splashes of ink. Through the closed communicating door which led to Karen’s room there penetrated a male voice. His father’s, he thought; and he went nearer to hear what was being said.
‘‘That’s the third brooch you’ve put on and then taken off.’’
‘‘But they’re all so ugly. Don’t you think they’re all terribly ugly? Poor Max, he had such little taste for such things. Look at this. It belonged to his first wife. Don’t you think it’s just too pathetic? I couldn’t wear it, really I couldn’t. How on earth do you think they ever came to choose such a thing?’’ There was a burst of laughter and an exclamation of ‘‘No, no, don’t!’’ followed by silence for many seconds. ‘‘ Really, you are naughty, Frank. No, I’m not at all pleased. No, I’m not. I’m not!’’
Colin was trembling and his whole back ached. He stooped again to the keyhole.
‘‘Now hurry, hurry up,’’ Ross was saying in that staccato voice of his which made whatever he said sound like an order. After a moment, he asked: ‘‘ What did he say to another evening out?’’
‘‘I didn’t ask him.’’
‘‘Liar!’’
‘‘I didn’t. Why on earth should I?’’
‘‘Because you’d hate it if for once you didn’t get your allowance. What an allowance!’’ he added contemptuously.
‘‘Do you know that it would pay the rent for my villino for over six months?’’
‘‘Are you serious about the villino?’’
‘‘Yes, I think so. Why?’’
‘‘It’s so far out.’’
‘‘But you’re going to leave Florence soon.’’
‘‘Must I, Frank?’’
‘‘Must you—what?’’
‘‘Leave Florence soon. I mean’’—she hesitated—‘‘well, why shouldn’t I come and live with you?’’
Brusquely he announced: ‘‘We’ve been into all that so often.’’
‘‘Well, why shouldn’t we go into it again? … Oh, I know how you despise me. You think that I’m pampered and useless, and that I couldn’t live your sort of life. You haven’t given me a chance. I like money and the things money buys—yes, I admit it. But money’s not essential to my life, of course it’s not essential. You—you are essential. Oh, my dear, if you only understood how I——’’
‘‘If you’re ready, let’s go.’’
‘‘Oh, you’re so cold, and unsympathetic, and—and inhuman! ‘Let’s go’—’’ she made an attempt to imitate him, and then gave a melancholy laugh. ‘‘ One day I think I shall kill myself because of you.’’
‘‘What on earth are you doing now?’’
‘‘Pinning on that brooch.’’
‘‘What brooch?’’
Again she gave the same unnatural laugh as she answered: ‘‘That brooch he gave to her. Look!’’
But why on earth——?’’
‘‘Oh, I think it goes so well with your idea of what a woman should be—a household drudge to be made whenever the male animal feels like it. I’m sure you’d have loved her.’’
‘‘I love you,’’ he said softly.
When they had gone, Colin wrenched at the door, and finding it locked, ran out into the corridor and entered that way. He felt he must do something, but he did not know what. There was the jewel-case, carelessly left open, and there was the small cardboard box, with the name of the New York jeweller, in which his mother’s brooch had always been kept. Now it lay empty. So she had, after all, gone out wearing it on her dress! In his rage he slapped the rumpled damask bedspread. They had kissed there. Who knew what disgusting, depraved things they had done there together? And, suffocating him, there was always the reek of her perfumes. Harlot, harlot, harlot! He strode over to the french windows, flung back the curtains, and pushed one half open. The night was vast beyond the floating terrace, and as he looked out on it, it brought a certain peace to his throbbing temples, heart and spirit. Tears came then and he did not attempt to check them. He wept for Max and his own behaviour that afternoon; he wept from an aching, outraged sense of decency; but above all he wept for his dead mother whom he had never known. She had died when he had been born, and he had always felt that it was he who had killed her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
THE following day Maisie took Colin and Pamela to a fair at Settignano.
The night before she had been out dancing with a colonel from the Air Training College, a corpulent little man with a tooth-brush moustache above excessively white teeth, a brown, wizened skin, and some thinning hair which he brushed over the top of his head to conceal a bald patch. ‘‘My dear, it was a priceless evening,’’ she told Karen at breakfast. ‘‘All those elaborate compliments. He looked into my eyes and asked me whether they were brown or hazel, and then he looked at my hair and asked whether it was chestnut or brown. So I said plain mouse. And then there were a number of references to my age, which sounded less complimentary than he obviously intended. I mean, no woman likes being complimented on looking so young—on being so young, yes, but he didn’t say that. And then he waited for me to say something in return about him, and I couldn’t, so at last he said: ‘Now what do you think about me?’ And there he was sitting opposite me, so fat and greasy, with the sweat on his forehead and a lock of hair slipping from its place, and all I could say was: ‘You have a nice smile.’ But, my dear’’—she leant forward to put one of her emaciated hands on Karen’s wrist, as she whispered—‘‘he was a superb lover.’’
‘‘Oh, Maisie, you didn’t!’’ But Karen said the words, only because she knew that they were what Maisie expected; her mind was busy with a wholly different problem. That morning she was going to tell Max that she wanted to join Ross out at his villino, and though this was what she had planned to do for many days past, her distaste for all scenes had already spoiled her breakfast.
When Maisie and the children had left, Karen went out for a long walk beside the Arno, and then, summoning her courage, hurried to Max’s room. But Lena was with him.
‘‘Oh, Lena,’’ Karen said in a voice which fright made cold and spiky. ‘‘I have some thi
ngs which I must discuss with my husband. Do you think you could leave us?’’
Lena’s face darkened as she picked up some papers. ‘‘Will you be long?’’ she asked, her breathing like a ground-swell under the mumbled words.
‘‘I really don’t know. I’ll call you when I’m finished. Perhaps you’d wait in the upstairs lounge?’’
‘‘Is that all right, Mr. Westfield?’’
Max’s attention seemed to return from some far distance as he said: ‘‘ Yes, yes—oh, yes.’’
‘‘Then I’ll leave you both,’’ Lena said, going out and shutting the door quietly behind her.
‘‘You know what I want to say?’’
Max’s face, now that the colour had all left it, glistened in a vaguely metallic way; and his small, green eyes were expressive of nothing but abject terror. Looking down at him and noticing how his hands trembled as he clutched them together, Karen felt all her previous nervousness evaporate and she continued decisively:
‘‘It won’t be a surprise to you. You must have known it was coming.’’ She balanced herself on the end of the bed, and swung her legs back and forth; in comparison with his strained, urgent body, hers was beautiful in its ease, grace and litheness. ‘‘ I want to go,’’ she said.
‘‘Leave Florence?’’ he said, momentarily enraging her with this deliberate refusal to face what she had to say.