by Francis King
‘‘Don’t be silly,’’ she retorted drily. She undid the clasp of her elaborate gold bracelet, a present from him, and then clicked it shut as she said, ‘‘I’m going to live with Frank—Frank Ross.’’
‘‘I see.’’
There was a silence until she said: ‘‘That’s all. I’m going to go to-day.’’
Then he gathered himself to retaliate: ‘‘And I suppose he really wants you?’’
She coloured as she retorted: ‘‘Well, of course he does.’’
‘‘That’s fine. That’s really fine.’’ The irony was pathetic in its feebleness and she despised him for responding with it, instead of with the rage which, unconsciously, her whole being would have welcomed. ‘‘And what do I do now?’’
‘‘That’s up to you. If you want a divorce——’’ the bracelet again clicked shut.
‘‘I must think,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s all so sudden.’’
‘‘Of course it’s not sudden! Good God, you’ve known for days now, haven’t you?’’
‘‘Oh, I suppose so.’’
She longed to goad him out of this mood of defeat and weariness; she wanted him to fight her and to fight for her. ‘‘ We made it obvious enough,’’ she said. ‘‘You almost came in on us that day. Don’t you remember?’’ He did not answer and she repeated: ‘‘Don’t you remember?’’
‘‘What about money?’’
‘‘I don’t want any.’’ It was only two days since her allowance had been paid. ‘‘I have some pride, you know. And so has Frank.’’
‘‘But he’ll never be able to support you.’’
‘‘How do you know? … Anyway, that’s our affair.’’
‘‘And the divorce? Do you want it? I mean, is he going——?’’
Again she coloured as she gathered her strength to say: ‘‘He doesn’t want to marry me. Or anyone, ever.’’ She seemed to be defying him as she stared at him, while he in turn stared hopelessly at his locked and trembling fingers.
‘‘Nicko will feel this,’’ he said.
‘‘Oh, please don’t try the sentimental approach!’’ she at once exclaimed, and he knew that he had touched her. ‘‘I don’t honestly believe that at that age children feel much. Besides I shall go on seeing him—if you will let me.’’
‘‘Perhaps you had better take him.’’
‘‘I can’t decide everything at once—please, please!’’ All at once she seemed to lose control; but she regained it as she said: ‘‘Of course if you don’t want him.… But Mother will always look after him, I know. She looks on him as her own. He’s far happier with her than he ever is with me.’’ Momentarily she thought back to the evening when she had found him crying and sleepless in bed, but she banished the memory. ‘‘But, of course, he’s my responsibility and I acknowledge that, so if you’d prefer——’’
‘‘No, let him be.’’
‘‘The other two won’t care two pins whether I’m here or not.’’
Max did not contradict her.
‘‘I hope you’ll be happy,’’ he said.
‘‘Oh, what a conventional thing to wish the wife who’s leaving!’’
‘‘I mean it.’’
When Karen had gone through the communicating door into her own room, she rang for Lena to be sent up to Max and then began to sort and pack her clothes.
‘‘That’ll do for to-day,’’ Max said to his secretary. ‘‘I have to go out.’’
Lena looked at his slumped figure as he sat with his back to her, one hand over his eyes, and all at once a wild, extravagant pleasure tore through her whole being. ‘‘I’ll take these home,’’ she said and, her large, competent hands all at once strangely incompetent, she began to dither among the neat stacks of letters. ‘‘Shall I return this evening?’’ she asked. ‘‘Mr. Westfield,’’ she said gently, when no answer came, ‘‘ do you want me this evening?’’
‘‘Oh, Lena!’’ Suddenly he flung round in the chair and an arm shot out. He looked up at her in misery, and then, his whole body writhing, put his head on the table. She was at once terrified and delighted when she heard his loud, gulping sobs.
‘‘Karen,’’ Mrs. Bennett said, entering her daughter’s room more than an hour later, ‘‘aren’t you coming to lunch? I can’t wait any longer. Max has gone out, God knows where, and Maisie and the children won’t be home anyway. You know I hate eating alone!’’ She was limping on a stick with a rubber ferrule, and her whole body, normally so erect, was bent almost double.
‘‘Aren’t you well?’’ Karen asked. It was the first time she had noticed her mother for many days, and the change had now shocked her. ‘‘What’s the matter?’’
‘‘Still this rheumatism. I don’t think the damp from the river suits me. Perhaps we shall leave soon,’’ the old woman added.
From all this, Karen supposed that Mrs. Bennett had still to be told the news, and she said: ‘‘Mother, I’ve something to tell you.’’ She hesitated, all at once filled with terror. ‘‘I’ve—I’m——’’ She clumsily attempted to roll up some silk stockings. ‘‘I’ve decided to leave Max,’’ she said at last.
‘‘Yes, he told me,’’ Mrs. Bennett replied calmly. ‘‘Poor Max! He’s feeling it so. Don’t you think it’s terrible to have someone’s life so much in your power? That’s always frightened me, you know—the way that love gives us powers of life and death over, others.’’ She seemed to be rambling, the words coming irregular and slow, while her gaze moved round the room and she made vague, wavering gestures with the stick. Karen said:
‘‘I suppose you disapprove.’’
The stick made another small flutter.
‘‘Well, do you?’’
‘‘Oh, my dear,’’ Mrs. Bennett mumbled, ‘‘duty and love are both such awful things. Such crimes are committed in the names of both of them. And when one has to choose between them …’’ She shrugged one shoulder, almost as if it were a nervous twitch. ‘‘When I think of the years I wasted …’’ Once again her voice trailed into nothingness.
‘‘You will look after Nicko for me, won’t you?’’
‘‘After whom?’’ Mrs. Bennett raised her head which had previously seemed to weigh downwards like a too heavy flower.
‘‘After Nicko,’’ Karen repeated.
‘‘Of course, my dear, of course.’’
Suddenly, and apparently without reason, Karen burst into tears. She threw herself on the bed, regardless of the clothes she had laid out, and sobbed: ‘‘I know you think I’m wicked and hateful. I know you think I oughtn’t to go. Well, why don’t you say so? Say so, that’s all. It’s so hypocritical to pretend to be—to be so impartial, when all the time I know you think me an absolute bitch for leaving the children like this. But I’ve got a right to my own happiness, haven’t I? Haven’t I?’’
‘‘Of course you have,’’ Mrs. Bennett said, sitting beside her and putting a hand on her shoulder. Suddenly she laughed: ‘‘ You sound just like Chris.’’
Karen sat up on the bed, in a frenzy, and shouted: ‘‘Leave me, leave me, leave me?’’
Strangely, as soon as her mother had gone, she again felt wholly calm. She washed, made up her face and went downstairs to eat a large meal.
After lunch, she returned to finish her packing, and discovered a strange thing. The cardboard box, with the name of the New York jeweller, to which she had returned the brooch she had worn the previous evening, now lay empty. She was sure she had put the brooch back; and at this moment, as she looked down at the bed of cotton-wool, she remembered how, as she had taken it off, she had thought ‘‘I’ll leave it for Pamela. I’d better leave all her jewellery for the child, that’s only fair.’’ She had been happy and full of generosity towards all the world. ‘‘ But how ugly it is,’’ she had thought. ‘‘Why on earth did I wear it? It wasn’t even a particularly effective gesture.… And yet it brought me luck. It certainly brought me luck.…’’
Karen went to the bell and rang for
the maid.
The girl, obviously frightened, at first could do little but repeat over and over again, in a voice of increasing shrillness, that she had taken nothing. Becoming more coherent, she pointed out that for weeks past she had looked after Karen and though jewellery was habitually left lying about on the table, not even a pin had been touched. She flung her arms about and her peasant face became more and more red in its bell of jet hair.
The old man who cleaned the floors and who had watched Colin at work on his jig-saw puzzle was next called in. In contrast to the girl, he was wholly unperturbed. He shook his whiskery, fox-like head, as he clanked down his bucket and rested his broom in the corner, and then stood, with a vague smile deepening the dirt-engrained furrows of his face, while he waited for Karen to say something further.
‘‘You know nothing about it?’’ she pursued in her halting Italian.
The old man went through the gestures of wiping his twig-like hands on his green-baize apron though, in fact, they were dry, and then cocked his head so far to one side that his ear almost touched his shoulder. ‘‘ Well, I wouldn’t say that,’’ he mumbled at last.
‘‘What do you mean?’’
He was reluctant to say what he meant, and coughed and pulled at his nose instead of giving an answer.
‘‘Well? Please tell me.’’
‘‘I can’t say I didn’t notice something,’’ he brought out at last. ‘‘Mind, I’m not saying more. But I noticed something, that I did.’’
‘‘Noticed what?’’
‘‘Well …’’ He swung his head from side to side, while his tongue licked at his dry lips. ‘‘It was those lads,’’ he said at last.
‘‘Ecco!’’ said the servant-girl as if the brooch had already been found.
‘‘Which lads do you mean?’’
‘‘The Italians, the ones that play with the Signorino. They were here this morning,’’ he said.
‘‘Were they?’’ Karen had not seen them.
‘‘Always here,’’ he said. ‘‘Almost every morning. They go in and out of the hotel, free and easy as they please. Well, the Signorino was out this morning, wasn’t he?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Well, they didn’t know that, see.’’ His voice all at once became confidential in its whisper, and his eyes glinted out of the recesses of his brown, wrinkled face. He had liked Colin; and had always resented the boys and the gifts Colin had lavished on them. ‘‘Mind, I’m making no accusation,’’ he said, raising one hand, with its thumb that grew horizontally into the palm. ‘‘I’m just saying what I saw, no more, no less. They were waiting, see, out there on the terrace, because they didn‘ t know when the Signorino would come back. And they began playing ball together—one of them little balls, ping-pong balls. And there was I, doing the Signorino’s room, so I could see them, out of the corner of one eye, I could. Well—now mind, I’m making no accusation—but that ball bounced in here, and the big chap, the big one’’—he raised one trembling hand to indicate Enzo’s height—‘‘he came in here, into this very room, and he didn’t come out for more than a minute.’’ He coughed with satisfaction as soon as he had finished his tale.
‘‘You saw him come in here?’’ Karen pursued.
‘‘With me own eyes. I could swear to that—on the Bible, if need be. There he was, and he came in here, and when he came out the other said: ‘Got it?’ and he said ‘Yes’. At once they upped and hopped it.’’
Karen’s face all at once became dangerously hard. ‘‘We’ve had trouble from them before,’’ she said. ‘‘It was a pen last time. We were fools to trust them.… But you can swear all this happened?’’
‘‘I can swear, Signora.’’ He crossed himself piously and then said: ‘‘It wasn’t for me to say it, but I thought all along, I said to meself, well, I said, there’s going to be a packet of trouble there, likes as not, having them boys off the streets to play in the rooms of decent folk. It don’t work, never does, to make a——’’
Karen cut him short.
Hurriedly scribbling a note to Max, she decided that she had already wasted enough time on a matter that was really of no importance.
Chapter Thirty
SO, for the second time that week, the Rocchigianis were visited by the police.
Ever since Bella’s death, Giorgio had been in bed with a slight, but perpetual temperature which rose in the evenings and prolonged attacks of coughing after which he would lie back exhausted, the tears streaming down his cheeks. At a first glance he did not look ill. His colour was good and when, in the heat of the day, he flung aside his bedclothes, the body thus revealed seemed healthy and sturdy. Yet his fever persisted and he seemed to have lost all will to conquer, or even to resist it. Sometimes he would play his mandoline but after a few minutes of strumming he would put it aside and once again stare at the cracked, blotched ceiling or out of the open window.
His mother would come in and put a hand on his forehead, sighing as she did so. ‘‘You’ve eaten nothing.’’
‘‘I don’t feel hungry.’’
‘‘But just a little of that broth.’’
‘‘I don’t feel hungry. Please, Mother.’’
‘‘Well’’—again she sighed—‘‘I must get to work.’’
On the day the brooch was stolen, Enzo was seated on his brother’s bed, though many minutes had passed since either of them had spoken. They had never discussed Bella, but her presence seemed always to stand between them, making communication more and more difficult. Enzo had come to hate his brother, and Giorgio felt what was almost a hate for Enzo, as we always tend to hate those who have witnessed our shame. Yet neither of the boys admitted to himself that this hate existed.
‘‘Why don’t you drink the soup?’’ Giorgio suggested. ‘‘It’ll get cold.’’
‘‘You must drink it.’’
‘‘I couldn’t. Go on—go ahead.’’
‘‘But you must eat something.’’
Giorgio’s weak face became suddenly obstinate. ‘‘I tell you, I don’t want to eat anything,’’ he said petulantly. He raised a hand and slapped it against the wall, and then brushed off the tangle of wings and blood that had once been a mosquito. ‘‘Brute!’’ he said.
Enzo, who had not eaten all that day, took up the bowl. ‘‘You’re sure?’’
‘‘For the hundredth time, I don’t want it. I don’t want it!’’
‘‘It’s good.’’ Enzo began to drink, raising the bowl with both hands and tilting it at his lips. The lukewarm soup made him feel instantaneously stronger and more amiable. ‘‘ You’ve missed something,’’ he said.
‘‘Well, good God!’’ Signor Rocchigiani had opened the door and stood looking in, his grease-stained, blue-and-white trousers hanging low on his hips and his open shirt revealing a singlet grey with dirt. He shambled forward, scowling from under the grey tufts of his eyebrows and breathing so heavily, after his climb upstairs, that the whiskers which grew from his nostrils vibrated and a kind of grunt sounded from the recesses of his throat. ‘‘So that’s why Giorgio eats nothing. You come up and wolf it all.’’
‘‘I didn’t want it, Father.’’
‘‘That’s not the point. You ought to be drinking it.’’ With one hand he tousled Giorgio’s hair, an action which his son particularly disliked. ‘‘ How are you going to get well if you won’t eat?’’ he asked. To his elder boy he was always benevolent; secretly he was a little afraid of him. ‘‘Eh?’’ he said. ‘‘Eh?’’
‘‘I shall get well,’’ Giorgio said wearily.
Signor Rocchigiani began to tug something from his trouser-pocket and at last produced a banana. ‘‘Ecco!’’ he said. ‘‘I bought it as a present for you. Not for you, young rascal,’’ he said, still maintaining this new mood of benevolence as he pointed the banana, like a pistol, at Enzo. ‘‘And I bought you this, too.’’ Once again he grubbed in the trouser-pocket and produced a silver identity disc, inscribed with Giorgio’s n
ame and the address in the Borgo, and a silver bracelet on which he began to string it. It was a present which, whether from accident or design, was exactly suited to the tastes of the boy, and Giorgio was delighted. ‘‘ Give it to me,’’ he said, and having fastened it round his wrist, he turned it this way and that, cocking his head at the same time, like a woman examining a ring. For the first time for many days he smiled without an intense, suffering languor.
‘‘Pleased?’’
‘‘Very much.’’
‘‘And look—I bought myself this.’’ Signor Rocchigiani displayed his own hairy wrist on which was fastened a watch. ‘‘ Like it?’’ he asked.
‘‘But good God, Father, where did you get the money?’’
‘‘That’s my secret.’’
‘‘I hope this doesn’t mean that you’ve——’’
‘‘Now look, my boy, have you ever known me do a dishonest thing? Now, have you? I ask you, have you?’’ When Giorgio and Enzo could not restrain their smiles, he exploded: ‘‘ What are you both sniggering at? What’s the joke?’’
‘‘Nothing, Father,’’ Giorgio said, beginning to cough and continuing to do so for so long that it was like a machine gone out of control. ‘‘Nothing at all.’’ Between gasps, he said: ‘‘ But tell us—where did you get the money?’’
‘‘Mind your own business,’’ Signor Rocchigiani answered with an intense self-satisfaction. ‘‘Curiosity killed the cat,’’ he added, in his childish addiction to proverbs.
Ten minutes later the police had arrived.
There was a wisp of a middle-aged man, who had the perpetually suffering expression of a martyr to dyspepsia, and with him a youth whose over-large hands and feet, sullen peasant’s face, and a habit of walking with his head thrust forward, as if in aggression, lent him a kind of brutal charm. Both were in plain clothes, the senior man in a shiny blue suit and black shoes, now grey from having remained so long unpolished; the junior in a cheap grey-and-white striped cotton, a peculiarly bright tie of contrasting lines of green and purple, an artificial silk shirt and slipper-shoes of the grey, punctured suêde then most in fashion among the men of his class. It was these men who had also come to the house after Bella’s death.