by Tim Parks
‘l see you ‘ave the Gucci bag,’ Armando said, taking his seat in the classroom.
'That’s right.’
‘Ees very nice the Gucci bag.’
Morris said he had always admired the quality of Italian leathergoods and gritted his teeth ready for the lesson.
‘Have a good weekend, Armando?’
'Yes, I ‘ave,’
3
Morris was telling an apocryphal story about Stan. There were the mother, the grandmother, two older sisters (how was it he had understood there was only one?), a certain curiously-named Bobo, and Massimina herself who watched him with full dark eyes. The maid had served hors d’oeuvres of chopped spinach and sour cream in little balls (delightfully known as ‘priest stranglers'), a pasta course of lasagne and ham, a meat course of simple, lightly done and deliciously toothsome steak, and now a dessert called Tiramisu, which seemed to be some kind of soft smooth coffee cheesecake, extremely swallowable and topped with cocoa. Morris had made appreciative but not overly enthusiastic comments on the food, giving the impression, he hoped, that he was perfectly used to meals of this kind. Despite a raging hunger he had not only managed not to wolf things down, but even to leave a morsel on each plate and to refuse (ever so politely) every offer of seconds. His clothes perhaps, and especially the college tie, had proved a shade more formal than those of his hosts, but that was rather as it should be, Morris felt, on a first and humble appearance. And his Italian was excelling itself. He was in form.
‘But the point is,’ he wound up, ‘that Stan is really very well off. Yes!’ His bright eyes gleamed at their surprise. The fabricated story was at its twist and they seemed to be enjoying it. Morris paused for effect and smiled. (It was always he who did the entertaining. He had noticed that. The boring people fed off anybody with a scrap of imagination.) 'Yes, his family owns a whole string of motels in Los Angeles! And he had no need to live in the abandoned house at all. No. In -fact, Stan could easily have taken up a nice fiat the very day they’d married, if only they’d been allowed to marry. In the centre even. And if he’d just had the good sense to sit down with Monica’s parents and explain his real situation then they’d never have worried at all most probably. Because for all his hippy ideas and clothes and beads and beard and things., Stan is really awfully nice. You know these Americans. But as it was, of course, what could they do? They had the impression the boy was from the gutter and that their daughter was going to end up there too. So they sent poor Monica off to Paris to a convent school, even though she didn’t know a word of French, and poor Stan was left destitute in his abandoned house with his vegetarian cookbooks and Oxfam clothes and all his money that he never wants to spend.’
Morris, narrating, shot regular glances at Massimina which the others could hardly fail to see. The story, in one sense, given the circumstances, was extremely ingenuous and pointed. But that was precisely Morris’s intention. It would indicate at once his fears, his appreciation of their fears - their legitimate fears he seemed to be saying - and his explicit intimation that he was on their side and that there was no problem in his case anyway. No beads, beard or Gandhi posters with Morris. For a moment he almost wondered whether he shouldn’t finish up the story with a real moral wallop, have the poor fictitious Monica hang herself in the loos at the Gare du Nord, or turn lesbian and make porno films or something. But perhaps it wasn’t the moment for a risky self indulgence.
Massimina smiled. ‘More Tiramisu!' She was already busying herself with the great cut-glass bowl. This time Morris accepted - ‘just a spoonful’ - watching her attentively. Massimina had a curious mixture of long black hair, light freckles on a camellia textured skin, and clear big generous dark brown eyes. Her nose and facial structure had a fine sharpness about them and when she smiled she was definitely attractive., though in a kindly rather than sexy way.
Considering the obvious wealth of her family, Morris found it odd that he should be the girl’s first suitor, but he put it down to her youth and painful shyness. One fact he had learnt from their long chats in the bar after lessons was that ever since her father died, when she was two, Massimina had slept with her mother. The thought of the two females going to bed together, the one old and heavy and stale, the other fresh, young and virgin, stirred a curious sensation in Morris that wasn’t quite excitement,or quite repulsion, but as it were an intensification of interest pure and simple.
He prided himself on his interest in life.
Bobo, short for Roberto, who it turned out was Antontlh’s fidanzato, had some more Tiramisu too. He was scrawny and jawless and ate rather too fast with his head right down near his plate, Morris felt definitely superior, especially when he kindly remembered to offer his arm to the infirm grandmother as they moved from the dining room to the sitting room for the coffee and cognac. He was a gentleman, damn it, despite his background, and of how many so-called gentlemen could you truly say that? The only thing he absolutely must remember was not to drink too much. Absolutely not. He’d already gone through three or four glasses of Soave from the family’s own vineyards. Just a nip of cognac now and that must be the end of it.
In many respects the sitting room was very much like the dining room - heavily furnished and dark with an overwhelming sense of straight lines and woodenness about it. This was certainly not the nouveau riche. The floor was marble, black-and-white chequerboard squares, the furniture painfully upright in coffin quality mahogany, while ivies of the more sombre kind trailed dark leaves across a tiger rug (genuine down to the bullet hole). Yet surprisingly, the old-fashioned curiosity of the room put Morris at his ease, rather than the opposite. It was the theatricality of the place. How could you feel responsible for anything said in a room like this? And especially if it was said in Italian. He sat down on a viciously straight-backed chair, careful not to jerk his head too much lest dandruff should sift down onto his jacket.
Apart from the decrepit grandmother, all the women were now out of the room for a moment, fussing after biscuits and petit fours. It was the moment, it seemed, for the scrawny Bobo’s interrogation.
‘You’re a teacher, I hear?’
It amused Morris no end to hear people say, ‘I hear’, of something they knew perfectly well. After all, they must be aware he had met the girl through the school, mustn’t they? But he would have to be careful with Bobo. A couple of remarks over dinner had indicated that the lad was nothing less than the son of the largest poultry magnate in the Veneto. A coup for the signora mamma who was doubtless happy to the point of wetting her pants. And hence Bobo’s opinion would count for everything. Morris smoothed his face blank with humility.
'That’s right, I do some teaching.’ He hesitated. From the corner of his eye he caught a glance of Massimina’s mother, standing at the doorway, her face grained with the hard lines of fifteen years’ most businesslike widowhood.
‘But that’s an extra really that I do more for my own pleasure than anything else, and then as a favour to the director of the school. My main job here is as an import-export agent. I’m associated with the London and Bristol trade boards and when companies in those towns are looking for customers or suppliers in this area, I do the contacting for them.’
Morris then very casually mentioned the names of three Veronese companies he was working closely with at the moment, two clothing producers and one wine exporter, names you saw on posters and local television commercials. There was a fair chance, of course, Verona being the tiny, tight-knit place it was, that either the signora or Bobo would know people in these companies. But precisely the aplomb with which Morris took that risk should prove the clinching factor.
Having said that, Morris waited. He mustn’t, at all costs appear to be defending himself. There was a space of almost a minute. The signora’s mouth had a definite, sunken, false-teeth look about it.
‘And why did you come to Italy?’
‘Fell in love with the place like everybody else. Holidays, you know. You do have such a marvellous co
untry, Then, when my father in the Trade Board said he could get me this job, I jumped at the chance. I’ll be here permanently I imagine.’ Morris smiled, his own teeth being, as he knew, perfectly white. The fact that it was his father’s patronage that had got him the mythical job would be just what they wanted to hear. Strong family. Plenty of leverage. And then one could always have the man die if the whole thing got dicey.
Over coffee, Antonella wanted to talk about Massimina’s studies. Antonella and the other older sister, Paola, both sat cross-legged and straight-backed on their straight-backed chairs with an atrocious air of nunnery about them, and for the first time Morris felt a twinge of genuine sympathy for the younger girl’s plight as the family dunce. He said he felt Massimina’s main problem was nervousness when it came to the exam, since in his evening class she worked hard and well. He accepted a piece of marzipan in the shape of the tower of Pisa. Massimina smiled a meek thank you. Then at the mere mention of photographs from somebody or other, Morris insisted on wading through all the family albums to the polite boredom of everybody else bar Massimina and the grandmother (charmed her pants right off!). Here was an afternoon on Monte Baldo, here another when Antonella was bora. Here was Massimina at five. Oh ehe bella! Che carina! And what a fine man Il Signore had been, my word! Very handsome.
Morris didn’t even have to grit his teeth. He felt marvellous, was the truth. The smell of polished wood mingling with expensive female perfume was like a drug taking him up and up; the taste of quality cognac, Vecchia Romagna (how could he refuse a second glass?), and then the wonderful, the quite exquisite straitlaced opulence of it all… perfect! At the front door he kissed Massimina most decorously on both freckle-dusted cheeks. ‘Coraggio!' he whispered.
‘I left my car down in the square,’ he explained to the others - and then all the way home on the bus he was trying to remember whether he had ever told Massimina he didn’t have a car. (Why on earth did he go home by bus every evening if he had a car?)
The letter arrived only two days later, quite a feat by Italian postal standards. And it was typed.
Egregio Signor Duckworth - how Morris hated to see his ugly surname! And where on earth had they got it from? Had he ever mentioned it to Massimina? Had he? No. They had checked up, then. How terrifically suspicious they all were! And on what possible grounds?
Egregio Signor Duckworth, I am writing to let you know that Massimina will not be attending any more lessons at the school. You will appreciate that this is a decision we have taken together as a family and we trust you will not try to contact her, Massimina herself agrees with us that you are not the right person for her.
Distinti saluti,
LUISA TREVISAN
There was nothing in the world for Morris then. Nothing. He couldn’t even take in a handful of wealthy peasants with their pocketful of real estate and plonky vineyards. And what had he done wrong? He, Morris? His manners had been impeccable, hadn’t they? He hadn’t eaten too much, even though he was near starving. His hand had been firm and dry when he offered it to the mother and Bobo. He had even given the old crone of a whining grandmother his arm for God’s sake, to get her into the sitting room! Not a crumb had he dropped, not a drop of wine spilt. What on earth could they have against him? His Italian had been faultless, bar the ghost of an accent. Okay, so they’d discovered he was exaggerating a little about the import-export thing. But who wouldn’t? They had brought that upon themselves with all their bourgeois need for solid incomes. And it was the kind of job he was bound to get hold of in the end. Someone of his capacity. Morris was furious. Who the hell did they think was going to marry their dumb freckled daughter when all was said and done? Who in his tiny right mind! And to have to put up with those two nuns as sisters in law!
He went into the bathroom to look at himself. Red eyes, tousled hair. Morris! ‘Promising’ they had always written on his school essays, on his reports, his university papers. So much promise come to this! Very deliberately, slowly, he stripped himself naked to look at himself, his real skin-and-bone, fingers-and-toes, prick-and-scrotum Morris self in the mirror. Promising! He was quite bubbling over with self-pity. An anguish of it. Never felt failure so acutely before. Beaten and beaten. He saw his tears in the mirror. He looked at them up close, how they gathered along red eyelids. Mocked and trounced. So undeservedly! He picked up his Philips adjustable-head cartridge razor and hacked a tiny chunk from his arm. A bead of blood welled out slow and bright, turned into a trickle, and Morris laid himself out naked on the cold tiled bathroom floor and closed his eyes on the darkness of nothing to do and no one to be and nothing at all ever to look forward to.
4
When Father hit her she had come to his bed and slept there. She pulled him into her breasts, kissed his hair. It was difficult to believe a memory could be so vivid still. A person of such quality like that. Even if she was dumb. Of how many people could you really say that they were people of great quality? And with that special female quality. Generosity, giving, sacrifice. The quality had to do with the dumbness in the end. That was most curious, and also true of Massimina perhaps. The quality of a sacrificial victim: dumb, as a sheep to the slaughter. Because she had never understood Morris at all. She had never realized that even as she got into his bed and wrapped him in her warm arms and pulled him into her breasts, all love, Morris was already experiencing the shame of the remarks Dad would toss at him later, already wishing she were gone.
If he thought of Mother’s largeness in his bed, her warmth and smell, her slight dampness and breath in the morning after those nights - not frequent, but frequent enough - that Dad had hit her, Morris felt surges of emotion, confusion, deprivation. When she died it had all been rather easier in the end.
Her photograph was on the bedside table. She had his own straight thin nose and blond hair, but otherwise she was rounder, more fleshy and her flesh had a defeated look, a lack of tone that the eyes simply confirmed, big and weak, with a slight flutter, something half alive trapped between the fine net of wrinkles she’d had at only thirty-eight. And they weren’t smile wrinkles either. It was difficult to know what to think of people like his mother.
Perhaps he had been in love with her was the truth. Though Morris held no truck at all with psychoanalytic clichés that aimed to reduce your personality to the most animal determinism. If he had loved her, it hadn’t been Oedipus style. No, he had loved her for her unthinking thoughtfulness, for that stupid, blind generosity (to bastard Dad!), that incredible trusting acceptance of (satisfaction with) her own lot, that mad, religious belief in life, that had her always knitting refugee blankets and saving milk bottle tops.
‘I do, dear Dad, appreciate your reaction though. I suppose it could all be rather suffocating, coming back from the pub to find …’
But the dictaphone had run out of tape. Another expense.
Yes, it had definitely been easier when she was dead. Less confusion. In fact it was a period he remembered as one of the happiest. He flaunted his grief. With Dad, at school, with himself. Flaunted and nursed it. There was a certain distinction in having one’s mother die so young. They even stopped hissing ‘greaser’ when he shot up his hand to answer every question (not that he had really minded. It had been a confirmation really of his superiority, their jealousy). A great period. Dad had tried to be so nice and Morris had shaken his head and refused to speak and burst into tears. Serve him right as rain. He kept all his mother’s old cosmetics in a plastic bag hidden in the curtain pelmet. All her old colours and smells. Because it was difficult to keep grief fresh (and ready for use). When Dad caught him putting on the lipstick, stretching his mouth the way she had, he called him a raving pansy, but Morris didn’t explain they were Mother’s. That was his business. And if he knew in his own heart that he was not a raving pansy then that, was all that mattered.
After six months or so. Dad found a new girlfriend, a skinny, giggly woman whose peals of laughter could be heard halfway down to Western Ave. Incredible tha
t he’d expected Morris to be nice about it. Incredible he hadn’t seen this was just another psychological stick Morris could get back at him with. Dad was a novice, you almost began to pity him. Morris refused to sit at table with her, to watch TV. He heaved his books up to his room and studied.
One gravitated, perhaps, towards what one could do best, the position of most power.
Of course Dad, in his incredible pig ignorance, somehow related higher education to homosexuality, so that when Morris was the first student at Acton High ever to get to Cambridge, it was all confirmation to him. They more or less said good riddance to each other. And what riled Morris most of all when they threw him out two and a half years later, was that he had nowhere to go but back to Acton, and Dad’s told-you-sos.
He had had, for the only time in his life, and for no more than ten minutes, ten milligrams of cocaine in his trouser pocket twisted into a piece of tin foil. He thought he would wait till he was sober before deciding whether to take it or not. If he hadn’t been drunk at one of their pathetic parties he would never have accepted the stuff. Never in a million years.
The master’s point was that he was making an example. Morris was the kind of person they made examples of, not being connected to absolutely anybody who was in any way remotely anybody. As a result the whole thing passed quite obscenely unnoticed and no example was really made. The kind of irony Morris could do without. Even the students’ union, which Morris had repeatedly snubbed (he was interested in his studies, the first he was going to get, not in playing adolescent politics and sending money to Chile) seemed determined to let the matter drop without conflict.
‘I miscalculated on two fronts, Dad.’ Who cared if the thing was working or not. ‘If I’d made a big show of being working class from the beginning, instead of hiding it and spending all the grant on dressing well, then the union would have stepped in. If, on the other hand I’d dedicated myself to making useful friends, then somebody might have brought some influence to bear. But I got my head down from the start.’