Cara Massimina

by Tim Parks

  And she said: ‘I’d very much like to meet your dad. I do hope he comes over. He must be very brave, going on after a disaster like that.’

  What was he supposed to do? Morris thought. Kill himself? Dad? In the end he got up in the morning, went out to work at seven thirty, lunch at the canteen, came home, snatched tea and off to darts at the pub till closing time, the same as always. What could it possibly matter to him whether Mother was there or not? If anything it was an obstacle out of the way.

  The only one who truly missed Mother was Morris.

  ‘He despised me,’ Morris announced unwisely.

  ‘Cosa, Morri?’

  ‘Dad. He was always saying I wasn’t a real man because I didn’t go out to work at sixteen.’ Why not let the girl hear? ‘And then because I spent so much time reading. He had this obsession about real men and work and women. He’s always saying how socialist he is and then wants everybody to go and break their backs from dawn till dusk for some capitalist coronary candidate (the one who killed Mother for example), as if . . .’

  But when you said it like that it didn’t mean anything at all. He didn’t seem to be getting anywhere near explaining it. And not with the tapes either. The thing eluded you. As if the problem was somewhere else altogether.

  She didn’t know what to say of course, though you could hardly blame her for that. You could hardly expect your kidnap victim to provide you with comfort and intelligent conversation after all, could you? To settle all your little personality niggles. No one else ever had for heaven’s sake, so why expect it now. But Morris suddenly found he was near to tears.

  When he didn’t speak for some moments, she said, ‘A bit like me and Mamma really, her wanting me to study all the time when it’s obviously useless. Only with you it was the opposite.’ And then she said, ‘Morri, don’t be upset,’ and she slid a slim naked arm round his shoulders so that their warm skins came together in the heat and she kissed him with tongue and lips on the corner of his mouth. Morris tasted salt.

  ‘Oh Morri,’ she whispered, ‘I am so glad I don’t have to do any more exams!’

  The problem with having to watch her all the time was that it left him with very few free moments to himself. And there was so much to do! So when she said she felt too hot and needed another swim, Morris declined to join her—he didn’t like to go in the water too often, he said, delicate skin—and he sent her off on her own, promising to watch.

  Then as soon as she was splashing away into the melee of the others at the water’s edge, he took the nail scissors out of her beach bag and set to work on a copy of Panorama, searching out the right words, snipping them out and dropping them into a fold between two pages. Not such an easy task. He couldn’t find ‘wrapped,’ dammit. Nor ‘holdall,’ nor ‘zipped,’ nor ‘luggage rack.’ He’d have to buy some different kinds of mags. Or glue together single letters maybe? But that would take forever. Patience was the watchword though. Absolutely. He mustn’t write a single syllable in his own hand. Not just because of the handwriting, but this verbal hodge-podge would cover up any oddities in his Italian as well. Borrow a typewriter somewhere in the reception of some hotel to write the address perhaps. Tell them it was something for work and he didn’t have to handwrite it. Bobo’s address, not the Trevisans’, to cut out the danger of police intervention. He would have to get hold of a Verona telephone directory for that (or perhaps suggest to Massimina that they write the lad a goodwill postcard) and then he’d have to go to the station, or at least phone, for the times of the Milan-Palermo Espresso. No, go to the station was better, where he could actually see the times written. No hurry though. He absolutely mustn’t hurry or rush or frenzy. Time wasn’t against him in any particular way. They had enough money for much more than a month at the rate they were spending. This afternoon he would pick up the Verona Arena from one of the central newsagents (or the station perhaps, two birds with one stone). They should have received his first communication yesterday and have it in the papers today.

  KIDNAP OR PRACTICAL JOKE? FEAR MOUNTS FOR FATE OF MASSIMINA. Crap like that. But he had to know where they were up to. In fact it was rather in his favour if they were under the impression it was a regular kidnap. They’d bring in the special kidnap squads the papers were always crowing about and start checking up on all the millions of underground groups who were into this kind of thing, or people who might be enemies of the Trevisans and whose businesses were in financial difficulty and so on and so forth, never realizing they were up against a true master this time, an individual amongst individuals. They’d be searching every abandoned house around Verona (he’d done the right thing posting the letter there, in the city), because you didn’t look for kidnap victims in hotels, however cheap, did you? And he hadn’t really ‘kidnapped’ her anyway. Deny the letter—which they could never pin on him—and what did they have against him? A single lie to police and parents. Nothing. Disappear and they’d never bother following him for that.

  ‘Morri, ti presento Sandra. Ma che cosa stai facendo con . . . ?’

  ‘What?’ He was suddenly shivering despite the tremendous heat. He savaged the scissors into the page he’d been so carefully cutting. ‘Just trying to remember how we used to make patterns when we were kids, but I can’t get the hang of it.’

  ‘Morrees, Sandra; Sandra, Morrees.’

  Morris was on his feet now, sweat dribbling down his back, between his buttocks. Who the hell was this woman? Tall, sandy-haired with horse teeth sticking out a mile and a prominent aristocratic nose. His hand extended automatically and he hoped the smile he felt creasing his face was the charming one. God, you let the girl out of your sight for two minutes and she was already making friends with half the beach. Unless it was somebody she knew from . . .

  ‘Piacere,’ he got out. Her hand was wet from the sea, his own sticky with sweat. He tried to be aloof and shy looking; that generally turned people off. ‘Scusi se sembro un po’ . . .’

  Massimina burst out laughing. ‘She’s English, Morri. That’s why I asked her to come over and meet you. She’s English!’

  ‘How do you do,’ Morris said, brusquely now. ‘I’m afraid I hadn’t understood.’

  The woman had asked Massimina the way to the showers apparently. (Why did everybody have to ask the stupid girl things? Nobody ever asked Morris anything.) So Massimina had taken her across the beach and they’d shared the same hundred lire piece standing under the same shower with Massimina telling her everything about Morris and how English he was, staying hidden and white under the sunshade like a mole, while everybody else basked. And then she’d invited her over to meet him—because a holiday was for meeting people and having fun, wasn’t it? And Morris would be happy to be able to talk English with a real English person.

  ‘From Barnet—or Hadley actually—near London you know.’

  The gold belt, Morris thought. Half the Conservative Cabinet taking their dogs for walks, or having their servants do it for them when it rained.

  ‘I was brought up in South Ken myself.’ Believe that . . .

  Sandra had a blue bikini over no breasts at all and rather too much bum. Her suntan was golden brown, artificially so, Morris thought (but perhaps it was only envy), and her way of moving was coquettish. Age around twenty-four, much older than Massimina. And showing it. Pore problems around the lower part of the nose. She sat down on Morris’s towel and began to say how much she adored the heat. She switched from English to an awfully broken Italian for the sake of Massimina. ‘Vengo in Italia ogni anno.’ It sounded like ‘ano,’ but Massimina didn’t laugh.

  Morris tried to relax. What could they say to each other that could be damaging? Tourists didn’t read the local news, even if their Italian was good enough, and that didn’t seem to be the case with poor Sandra. In fact it might be better to have Massimina tied up in a painstaking conversation with an Englishwoman, rather than wandering free amongst all those Italians. Consider it a stroke of luck.

  ‘How long have you be
en in Italy then?’ he asked.

  ‘Myself? Not too long,’ the toothy woman said. ‘We drove down from Venice this morning in fact,’ and she began to talk about how much she adored the sunshine and citadels of La Serenissima, the sparkling water . . . ‘Per me è stato meraviglioso!’

  Morris saw an opportunity. ‘I’m just going to go and get today’s papers,’ he interrupted. ‘I’ll leave you two to chat.’ He picked up the copy of Panorama, holding it carefully so that the cuttings wouldn’t fall out, and hoped this exit would be sufficiently abrupt to discourage the girl.

  ‘Bring us some ice creams, will you, Morri.’ Massimina seemed proof against any offence. ‘What flavour do you want, Sandra?’

  ‘Zabaglione,’ Miss Hadley called after him, half pronouncing the ‘g.’

  Morris laboured across the burning sand. The beach wheeled around him alive with cries, radios, balls being hurled, twitching oily bodies to step across. He watched two boys in sandy swimming trunks slithering about with a football, a girl on her stomach with tiny blond hairs on the soft skin of her arms. Tomorrow he must buy some sunglasses and just relax, soaking it all up, watching it all. Why couldn’t he ever relax?

  He reached the steps to the road and slipped on his sandals. The weather was too hot. Far too hot to think straight. He would just dash to the nearest big newsagent, pick up an Arena (if they had one) and a Corriere della Sera, check out the Arena, throw it away and take the Corriere back to the beach with some ice creams. He couldn’t leave Massimina for long. Then drag her away from the other woman as soon as possible and off to lunch. With any luck he might persuade her to buy some fish today, seeing they were by the sea.

  Morris threaded his way across the busy seafront drive and scurried towards the centre in a gritty heat. He would have liked to take it easy and drink a long slow beer on his own, but there was no time for that. He had to try three newsagents before he came across a solitary copy of the Verona Arena.

  Out in the street again he was just preparing to open it and turn to the local section when his eye caught a small headline at the bottom of the front page.

  MISSING GIRL’S CLOTHES FOUND.

  He was puzzled.

  The red tracksuit of Massimina Trevisan, missing from her Quinzano home since last Friday afternoon, was found yesterday morning in a public waste bin at Vicenza railway station. Franco Galeardo, who has cleaned the bins in the station for more than ten years, said: ‘I saw the thing was still in perfect condition and decided to hold on to it. I showed it to my wife, thinking we could wash it and use it for my daughter and then she told me she’d heard on local radio the police were after a girl in a red tracksuit, so I phoned them directly.’

  After some hours police technicians were able to declare that hairs on the tracksuit corresponded with those found in Massimina’s room.

  Inside: AGONY OF FAMILY THAT WAITS.

  Morris crossed the street, walked directly into a bar and ordered a double Scotch on ice. He straddled a stool. She’d thrown the thing away! In a public bin of all places. Without even telling him. (Thank God she hadn’t left it in the hotel!) And if there were some of his hairs on that tracksuit too? A single blond hair. Had he leaned his head against her at any moment that first day? Or could they tell just from dandruff? He must have sprinkled a couple of flakes over her. We all had scraps of each other all over us. It was inevitable.

  He downed his drink in one and turned to the inside pages, scanning the columns quickly.

  . . . no blood, but police fear worst . . .

  And the letter? There was nothing about his letter. The post had let him down there obviously. Three days and it hadn’t arrived. The next one would have to go Express. Unless they were keeping it from the press for some reason.

  Morris caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror between bottles of alcohol. His face was flushed with the heat and the drink, not to mention the worry, his hair ratty and unkempt after his dip in the sea. Just his luck. Of all the bins she had to leave it in, it had to be the one emptied by a cheap scrounger on the lookout for second-hand clothes. (And for his daughter of all people! If Morris ever had children, he’d give them the best, for Christ’s sake. Why bring them into the world otherwise? Why had Dad brought him into the world?)

  He stood up and left the bar in a blinding temper.

  11

  ‘You’re just jealous. He wasn’t interested in me at all. He . . . ’

  ‘I’m not having dinner with them.’

  ‘But for days you’ve been asking me to go out to a restaurant and now the first day I agree, you refuse to go. Oh come on Morri!’

  ‘Not with them! If we go out, let’s go alone.’ His life had definitely become a farce. A real kidnap with the blindfolds, tent in the middle of the room and revolver always in your hand would at least give you the pleasure of knowing who was the boss. And it occurred to Morris that had his father ever taken part in a kidnap, that was most certainly the way he would have done it and he would quite definitely call Morris a pansy for having gone about it in this way.

  She rubbed lotion into his burnt back (her fault) in the cheap room full of flies and he knew she would be smiling merrily under that silly chic perm with the big curl dropping over her plucked eyebrow. Because she honestly thought he was jealous. There was no limit to female vanity. Now that she’d had her hair done and bought some clothes she thought she was Venus, dragging him round the shops all afternoon like that for perfumes and make-up. (‘Mamma never let me buy the make-up I wanted. I had to share it with my sisters.’) And only two days before she’d been happy at the prospect of spending the whole month of June, not to mention July and probably August, sweating like a little pig in that red tracksuit.

  ‘What on earth did you do with the tracksuit?’ he demanded.

  ‘I threw it away.’

  ‘But why, for God’s sake?’ Anger helped him to feign the necessary surprise. He twisted his head round sharply on the pillow to catch her grinning. Strangle the girl immediately, he suddenly thought. Now. That would settle it. Dump the body safely and then he could just cruise through it, pick up the ransom and go back to his flat in Verona with no more of this awful fuss.

  ‘Why though? You’re always droning on about saving money and then you go and chuck out something perfectly good.’

  Strangle the girl. It was strange, but his whole body suddenly filled with heat at this terrible thought. (And when he had been beginning to like her. When he had even had slight inklings of what love might be—that time she pressed her thigh against him with a wriggle and giggle walking along the seafront.) Strangle her. Nothing easier. And who would care in the end? (Hadn’t life definitely been easier when Mother was dead, for all his ostentatious mourning, for all if he’d ever loved anyone it was her? The conflict had gone out of everything, the sense of guilt, of Mother-wouldn’t-like-that. He’d felt freer. Perhaps all lovers in the end would be happier if their loved ones died.) Kill her. She was a nobody. Failed all her exams at school. (When had Morris ever failed an exam and look where it had got him?) Plus she deserved it. That letter she’d written to her mother (‘. . . perhaps he does lie sometimes . . .’), plus going and dumping the tracksuit like this! Morris felt his mind suddenly slipping into a nausea of fury that was also the nausea of his sunburn and the unbreathably stale air in this darkened, fly-filled cheapest of cheap cheap rooms. He could easily do it, he was much stronger than her. Just . . .

  ‘You said I didn’t look nice in it. I only want to wear things that please you from now on Morri. I . . .’

  What was he going to do with her at the end anyway? Imagine they gave him the money, what . . .

  ‘So I did it for you, you see.’

  She rubbed in the lotion, knelt on the bed beside his tortured back. She rubbed softly over the tops of his shoulders where it was worst. ‘You have a gorgeous back,’ she whispered, bending to his ear.

  He shivered and was hot together, flexing his damp fingers where they lay above hi
s head. Her voice became husky. ‘I’d so much like to make love to you Morri, if only we were . . .’ He didn’t move. He seemed to be getting hotter and hotter.

  ‘I’m not going to dinner with those two others. He was staring at you all the time.’

  ‘Whatever you say, boss,’ she laughed and her slim fingers slithering in oil down his back slipped inside the top of his bermuda shorts. His body tensed to a cord of steel.

  ‘Morri . . .’

  Any moment now, if she just . . . The heat in his body was intolerable. If she . . .

  There was a knock at the door. Morris twisted over and sat up straight and sharp as if caught in the act. She likewise, shooting off the bed, so that her wrist caught him in the jaw.

  ‘Avanti!’ Who in God’s name was it? Police? He brought his hand up to his face. One of her rings must have caught him and his mouth was bleeding. ‘Avanti, prego.’ And Sandra came into the room with boyfriend Giacomo.

  Having thrown away the Arena, Morris had returned to the beach with three cardboard cartons of zabaglione to find another development he hadn’t expected. (And he’d considered himself so prepared, so sharp.) Sandra’s boyfriend. Sandra’s Italian boyfriend. Morris had imagined that when she spoke of ‘we,’ she had been referring to herself and her English boyfriend, or girlfriend, or at the very worst a whole group of English people, none of which would have been the least bit dangerous. Such people were unlikely to know that Massimina Trevisan was supposed to have been kidnapped. But an Italian boyfriend was different. And especially one who seemed to have more eyes for Massimina than for his own companion. (Morris didn’t actually think Massimina was quite so attractive as to deserve all this attention, though her breasts were certainly impressive—and that was precisely the department poor Sandra was weak in.)

  Giacomo was obviously considerably older than Sandra, and smaller. He walked with a serious limp, wearing long trousers to hide whatever problem it was he had with his legs, and his dapper, inevitable Italian moustache was grizzled and grey. He snapped his fingers every few moments and rubbed his hands together and his conversation, which dominated everybody else’s, was a constant stream of jokes, witty remarks and innuendos darting around the borderline of the acceptable.