by Jack Tollers
Chapter Seven
Street Serenade
It seemed a dream but that morning he actually was once again all alone with Victoria in the kitchen. Of course, it had been a very long night and there had been nightmarish moments when he actually felt that they had all made a hash of things and, that he, Peter, had made a perfect fool of himself.
‘Who rang the Police?’ he enquired.
Victoria turned her blue eyes on him with a chaffing smile; she also repeated what now seemed to Peter a trade-mark of sorts, her most distinctive feature—an impatient movement of the hand pushing back a long wisp of jet-black hair that kept falling over her forehead. Must be part of the black magic, Peter thought inconsequentially, since she could easily save herself the trouble with a hairpin or two.
‘Could’ve been anyone... any neighbour happening to live nearby... I mean, anyone within earshot of the racket you were all making. You made enough of a row to wake the dead,’ she laughed again, remembering, ‘I mean, that sort of hue and cry can carry quite a long way in our little town at half past five in the morning.’ Peter couldn’t detect the least sign of reproach in her voice. On the contrary, while they went over the night’s riotous events she laughed repeatedly, a delightful cataract of mixed sounds that sent shivers down his spine. He couldn’t quite stop remembering Thomas’s ritornello: ‘My uncle always used to say...’
All the same, he tried to justify the clatter. ‘It started in a perfectly civilised way, I thought, with all of us singing quite in tune Algo contigo,’ he smiled remembering the unabashed lyrics, ‘I think that beast of a dog you’ve got was wholly responsible for disturbing the neighbourhood. He has no musical sense, let alone any appreciation of romanticism and serenades.’
She laughed again.
‘Poor old Kaiser, he’s always shown himself to be rather thick-skinned where art is concerned, poor chum,’ she grinned mischievously, ‘or perhaps he was just a weeny bit jealous.’
‘Police should’ve put him in the jug instead of my good friends.’
True enough, they had gingerly approached the hedge just below Victoria’s window and had begun to sing quite nicely when the Wade’s dog rushed against them on the other side of the fence and promptly started howling and yelping in a frenzy. Not even Joseph could shut him up, and the rest of them resolved that the only way out of their quandary was to increase the sound of their singing voices in an attempt to outdo the brute. The row woke Victoria (and the rest of the household) and peeping through the curtains she immediately recognised her cousin Andrew, and her brother, with what looked like a gang of drunkards. But there was no question that their singing was addressed to her balcony. Some may think that she reacted rather improperly, but not Victoria, she simply felt honoured. She hurriedly put on her dressing gown and opened the French windows leaning over the railings of the small balcony that overlooked the singing choir. She was smiling at them radiantly until she saw Peter among the singers and instantly recognised that he was effectively serenading her, even if he was singing rather timidly next to Andrew whose voice carried much more powerfully than the rest of the company. In any case, any doubts she could’ve harboured would have been easily dispelled since her brother Joseph— who was right behind Peter—kept indicating the suitor with an obvious and unnecessary pointed finger.
Some lights in the house indicated that they had woken more than one member of the family, and two small heads appeared in a little window next to Victoria’s room. Peter began to get cold feet again and stopped singing, but the choir seemed to take no notice, Andrew going on to a second, and also well known, serenade song.
Meanwhile the dog had discovered an opening in the fence through which it uninterruptedly barked at the musicians. It was then that Jimmy, exasperated by the noisome dog took to pouring Scotch down the animal’s throat through the hole in the hedge. This initially drove the beast into what seemed a state of derangement but soon enough it stopped barking and took to yelping, eventually backing off into the shadows with an unsteady gait that inspired Andrew and the rest of them into such fits of laughter that they just stopped singing.
Peter who hadn’t quite registered the scene kept his eyes fixed on Victoria and was quite surprised when Joseph sounded the alarm.
‘Christ! Police coming! Damn it!’
Sure enough a police-car had turned into the Wade’s street and was coming at them at top speed. It was a disaster. Peter and Jimmy knew that an incident with the Law, however insignificant, could well be the end of his military career. They had seen quite a few of their comrades being sent down over the most minor misdemeanours.
‘Through the hedge, now!’ Jimmy urged his friend in a frenzy ‘You’ve got twenty seconds to dive into the garden before...’
In effect, events seemed to require quick action and without a second thought Peter toppled over the fence while the rest of the company turned to face the car in an attempt to shelter him from the policemen’s watchful eyes. The car stopped with a screech of tyres and two bulky constables resolutely got out while the driver remained at the wheel. Thomas advanced a couple of yards towards them with diplomatic intentions. There followed a rather long conversation between the Chief constable and Thomas who was appealing to all his dialectics and casuistry in what looked like a vain attempt to persuade the man that they had in no way broken the law.
‘And, anyway,’ he regarded the policeman with an air of innocence, ‘we only meant to serenade the lady up there,’ he pointed at Victoria who remained safely secluded benignly smiling at the suspicious officer. ‘It’s all finished by now. As a matter of fact we were about to go home, I mean,’ he fiddled a bit with the well known lines, ‘Why don’t we just let bygones be bygones?’
Peter crouched next to the hedge while the other policeman seemed to be searching for him with a torch. He just hoped to God that the dog wouldn’t come back and give him away. Victoria watched from the balcony and just smiled at him, which wasn’t very prudent either, thought Peter, though he would have willingly given up his career at that very instant as long as she kept looking down at him with that particular smile on her face.
‘May I please see your identity cards?’ It began to be clear that the bobbies would not be dissuaded by Thomas’s explanation and that they meant business.
They all produced their cards except Andrew who started to play the guitar again, this time singing ‘The Angry March’, an emblematic left-wing song with revolutionary lyrics meant to defame all manner of State repression. In those years to sing such a song under the authorities' nose was asking for trouble. Anyway, on this occasion Andrew succeeded in undermining Thomas’s efforts to appease the officers.
Angry at them when they laugh with might
‘cause beforehand they’ve bought all their rights.
Angry at them when they moralise
And then our artists start to victimise...
‘Now listen to me, young man...’
But Andrew was clearly encouraged by the booze and in no disposition to stop his solo, not even when Thomas decidedly wrenched his guitar from him in an effort to assuage the policeman. Not in the least disconcerted by this, the other one carried on a cappella.
Angry when in the face of the day
Their hypocrisy they promenade.
This time the chief constable with a grim smile gave a step or two towards the rebel and was about to handcuff him when the house’s front door opened and Professor Wade appeared in an old fashioned smoking jacket. He briskly walked up to the gate and engaged one of the policeman with a commanding voice.
‘Look here, Sergeant, what the devil? Uh, I mean, what’s going on here?’ he asked peremptorily.
The police officer discreetly put away his handcuffs and turned to face this new character who appeared to wield some sort of authority. The man had in fact heard something about Professor Wade and seemed to remember that this neighbour in particular taught in some military institute or another. He sighed. It wa
s difficult to do his job when one in three of Bella Vista’s neighbours were in some way or other connected to the Courts, or the Military or something. A case in point was the incensed neighbour who had denounced these youngsters. As it happened, he was a wrathful Navy officer who lived half a block away and one could be quite sure that he would be peeping now through the window to ensure that the trouble-making gang would be effectively taken into custody and his interrupted rest avenged.
‘Well sir, we’ve received complaints from a neighbour to the effect that these youngsters here have been disturbing their rest and—’
‘Absolute nonsense!’ Professor Wade broke in, ‘These men uh... these men here, these youngsters happen to be my guests. In fact they were just preparing to leave when you, uh, appeared. And I’m prepared to bear witness that they were only singing at my house, which is, to my mind, not exactly a...’
Apparently this bit of jesuitry was lost on the policeman who shrugged, recurring to the official jargon.
‘Well sir, all the same I’m afraid these young men will have to come with me to the Station,’ he looked around at the by now silent bunch, ‘And I’m sure once we’ve checked their records they can carry on with... uh, whatever.’ He grinned at Andrew who was by now defeated by the man’s irony while Thomas couldn’t quite stop thinking that he was an unusually likeable man as policemen go. Thomas resignedly handed the guitar over to Professor Wade. One of the policemen opened the patrol car's door and gravely signalled at Thomas and Jimmy to get into the back. The Chief bade Victoria’s father good night and took Andrew and Joseph with him to his patrol car and in no time they whisked off leaving the incensed Professor with a dumb guitar in his hands helplessly fuming at Bobbies and all manner of authorities in general.
Once the Police had decamped Peter emerged from the dark discovering that his trousers were torn over one of his knees and that he had soiled his shirt when jumping through the fence. However he was much more concerned with the immediate future and turned half a face towards Victoria’s balcony. She wasn’t there and he hoped that she would appear to assist him in such awkward circumstances. Despite his disinclination he pluckily walked towards the gate that Victoria’s father was trying to close, clumsily fumbling its padlock while somehow hanging on to Andrew’s guitar.
‘Good evening, sir.’ But he hadn’t finished his respectful address when he happened to trip over a soft something that lay in the dark and fell sprawlingly while the beast gave a muffled yelp. The dog was evidently still suffering from a hangover of sorts and his stupefied howl seemed to underline his astonishment at the prodigious developments of that night.
‘What the hell?’ the professor was dumbfounded at the mixed sounds at his back and very nearly dropped the guitar. ‘What the devil...?’
Peter stood up feeling ridiculous and began trying to explain at top speed the foolish circumstances that had led him to trespass in such a preposterous manner but before he could quite finish his first sentence Victoria appeared out of the blue. Peter sighed with relief.
‘It’s all right, Daddy, they were only singing a serenade you know,’ she said, holding tightly the lapels of her dressing gown.
‘Well, I mean... But how the devil did this blighter...’
But before he could question his daughter much further, she was softly but firmly pushing him inside the house with Peter following in an embarrassed way, uncertain of what to say or do. Apparently Victoria had no such hesitations.
‘Now, in we go and I’ll make coffee for you,’ she looked at her escort with a beaming smile, ignoring the Professor who seemed all at sea while looking for a place to deposit the guitar in the drawing-room. The old man protested that it was much too early for that and apparently had entirely forgotten the intruder’s presence. Peter discreetly withdrew into a corner of the room. Victoria’s Father yawned, proceeded to thrust the guitar into his daughter’s arms and made straight for the stairways shuffling along and muttering to himself what Peter thought amounted to non-stop gibberish where serenades, police authorities and useless dogs seemed to be the main subjects.
Suddenly they were all alone, and through one of the drawing room windows Peter saw that the morning was well on its way. They smiled at each other and Peter boldly took her in his arms while Victoria gave a worried and significant glance at the stairway.
But that had been nearly two hours before, and now they were drinking coffee in the sunny kitchen while two of Victoria’s smaller sisters were toasting bread and wrangling over the jam and butter. He concentrated on the little girls that seemed quite deft at making their own breakfast all by themselves.
‘Don’t you think that we should better go to the Police Station and find out how things stand over there?’ he asked, ‘Or is it too far away?’ He was feeling a bit edgy at having to face Professor Wade again that morning—or Victoria’s mother who could appear at any moment. Also he felt a certain degree of compunction at his own happiness while his friends remained in custody.
‘No, it’s only a couple of blocks from here. But sure, I’ll change in a minute and off we go,’ she smiled brightly at him, her adorable dimple showing up on her left cheek.
It was a wonderful springtime morning, the dew clinging to every bud, the sun softly caressing them as they walked hand in hand on that memorable day towards the Police Station. Peter couldn't care less about his dishevelled appearance and Victoria felt that she was treading on heavenly clouds. About half way to their destination they met their recently released friends, a boisterous group in remorseless spirits that were still rehearsing ‘The Angry March’. On seeing them hand in hand Andrew burst out into all sorts of congratulations.
‘Hey! What? Are you engaged or what? I say! My compliments.’ He seemed quite excited with everything.
‘I told you! Thomas exclaimed, ‘My uncle always used to say...’
They all laughed at this.
‘You make a very nice couple, I must say,’ Jimmy chimed in.
‘Hey, my brother in law, what?’ said Joseph.
They all laughed again when they saw that both Peter and Victoria were blushing like mad.
Nevertheless, the two of them remained firmly hand in hand.