Rancid Pansies

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  After another hour or so, and having paid my various well-feigned respects, I drive away from Benedetti’s house still puzzled about the precise purpose of the evening. However: suppose I’m wrong and it is still possible to scupper the cult up at my former home? Suppose this time the Vatican were to take more effective steps to protect itself from accusations of pandering to popular superstition by launching its own investigation, one that extends to tracking down and grilling all the guests at my birthday party on that fateful night last year? I sounded confident enough when I assured the gross mayor that my other guests would unfailingly support my gospel, but I wonder if some of them might not have their limit. For instance, Adrian has already told me that Max Christ is a Catholic and comes from a devout Bavarian family. He might well prove susceptible to Church leverage. And if a man of Max’s international eminence were to recant and admit the apparition story was untrue, a sensational exposé across Europe’s news media hinting at corruption might very well be enough to destroy the cult at Le Roccie and with it the Comune’s (or the Mob’s) plans to get rich from it. And I hate to think what the press might do to my reputation as I take up residence in a house whose acquisition has been not entirely free of rule-bending.

  But this is surely mere paranoia. That’s what comes of dining with splendidly corrupt and scheming men, I think as I let myself into my deceased landlord’s flat. After an evening at Benedetti’s sumptuous place I am struck afresh by its aesthetic squalor. Somehow Mr Swanepoel’s taste in bed linen and decor foretold a sticky end. But the casual tale of his sudden demise has made its point. I vow that just as soon as I’m installed in my new house I shall never mention any of this ever again to anyone.

  *

  I spend the next few days frantically buying the basics for my new home: kitchen stoves and washing machines and beds and suchlike. For the first time in my life I have enough money not to agonise over the cost. Just get it done, Samper, is what I tell myself; then you can move in. The only thing to which I devote real care is the batterìa da cucina: the all-important pots and pans and general kitchen equipment. We artists concentrate on the things that really matter. I’m sure Picasso was far more particular when selecting new brushes and easels than he was over choosing a new girlfriend. At last there comes the wonderful moment when I can lock the late Mr Swanepoel’s door behind me, salute the last doddery nun on the stairs, drop the key off at Benedetti’s office and drive up to my very own house.

  As I have intimated before, the place lacks Le Roccie’s panoramic view which now strikes me as a shade too aerial, a little too detached and godlike. The new vista of adjacent wooded hills, the town’s far-off roofs and beyond them a coastless slot of sea suddenly feels appropriate for someone who, willy-nilly, has descended to being embroiled in local politics. Yet I can still sing up here without risking the complaints of a testy neighbour. On the other hand I can also drive a mere five minutes down the road and come to an outlying alimentari for basics like flour and sugar and lavatory paper. As far as I can discover my house has no name but the site is known informally to the locals as Sciupapiedi or ‘feet ruiner’: no doubt a reference to the days when ill-shod peasants named landscapes according to the different kinds of anguish they inflicted.

  How can one describe that sublime evening when one pours oneself a large g-&-t and for the first time sits outside one’s own house, looking out across a froth of olive trees over a new domain? So many dice have been cast one can no longer be bothered to think or worry about them. It’s even possible to ignore the fact that this otherwise bijou residence is still wearing a tin hat. The main thing is that Samper is finally here, at home once more, breathing juniper fumes in the sunset and hoping never again to move house until it’s time to be carried down to the local cemetery with its discreetly hidden rubbish heap of dried flowers and the empty red plastic cylinders of grave candles. Meanwhile, there’s much to be done. The one outstanding alteration to the house is the removal of its illegal top floor and the restoration of the original roof. This is to begin at once, and I have arranged for the entire upper storey to be sealed off and for the workmen to have access to it – together with their rubbish chutes and hoists – from outside at the back. It shouldn’t take long for them to demolish the unfinished walls, and putting the roof back on ought to be equally straightforward since it turns out that the speculative builder who removed it stored most of the original timbers in his yard in Lucca where they still are. The point is, I shan’t need to have workmen traipsing through the house with their bags of cement and rolls of carta catramata. A pity in a way, since from earliest childhood I’ve adored the smell of workmen: that manly, capable scent of dust and fresh sweat and linseed oil. What I don’t like are their cigarettes and transistor radios. All would be forgiven if only they smoked Egyptian rather than Virginia tobacco and listened to Haydn string quartets. But alas.

  What I’m really looking forward to is fitting my kitchen up as I want it. My natural creativity has been badly frustrated over these interminable homeless months, although I have managed to concoct a modern version of humble pie that I shall try to induce the St John restaurant, down by Smithfield, to take up. There is nothing wrong with deer’s entrails, liver and heart, and the St John has a wonderful way with umbles of all kinds. However, inventing ‘thought recipes’ is simply not satisfying. I am a hands-on cook par excellence. I need to get my fingers into the ingredients; that’s when the saliva and ideas start flowing. You would think this was a most basic human pleasure but I recently learned a shocking thing: that residential flats are now being built in London that don’t have a kitchen. Can you believe this? Apparently they don’t have a kitchen because their overpaid, philistine owners eat all their meals out. One can’t even begin to guess what sort of creatures these are. Imagine delegating one of life’s great pleasures to total strangers! If you can’t be bothered with your own food, what would you take trouble over?

  *

  Two days later history uncannily repeats itself. Years ago at Le Roccie when Marta first came to call I was up a stepladder in the kitchen. So I am today, busy fixing the hood of the extractor fan above the cooker, when the door opens and that well-known squeal ‘Gerree!’ turns my blood to ice. This time, however, history has added a twist. Marta is no longer a neighbour but a collaborator in the grandest artistic project of my life. With an inward sigh I carefully balance the screwdriver and felt-tip marker on the edge of the hood next to the glass of prosecco that I find aids concentration in these fiddly DIY jobs. Then I descend the ladder while fixing a courteous smile of welcome to my face.

  ‘Marta!’ I exclaim. ‘Welcome to Casa Samper. And Joan too,’ for that lady is even now coming in behind her, tucking the car keys into one of the pockets of her dungarees. ‘How inspired of you both to have arrived in time for a late morning celebratory glass.’ Thank goodness the prosecco, which I’ve only just opened, is not very special. There’s nothing more galling than having to waste a really good wine on people who can barely tell it from Coke. I quickly retrieve my own glass.

  ‘Gerree, your house is so lovely!’ Marta is saying. She is looking far less frumpish, I notice. In particular her hair has emerged from its Struwwelpeter phase. It has been cut and styled and, most important of all, washed so it has lost that aura of pristine undergrowth that would once have made a field entomologist’s pulse quicken in anticipation. What’s more, she’s even wearing a dress instead of one of her baggy old shifts that gave her that characteristic Bedouin traffic-warden look. In fact, she appears to be dressing like the sort of girl she now regrets not having had the nerve to be twenty years ago. For the first time since I have known her Marta looks, well, practically feminine. Even Joan seems not to have brought with her the trademark reek of dogs, for which I am grateful.

  ‘I was forgetting you’ve never seen this place,’ I say, handing them glasses of prosecco.

  ‘Never, Gerree. But it is so big! I think you have many rooms here, more even than at Le Roc
cie with your garage together.’

  ‘Yes, there’s certainly ample space for little me. And a bit too much land outside, unfortunately. Three hectares of olives. But there we are.’

  ‘Smashing position,’ says Joan. ‘But I have to say the corrugated iron doesn’t look very Tuscan.

  ‘That’s all coming off in a day or two and the original roof will go back on. That’s how I managed to get this place at an affordable price, among other things.’ It’s clear the girls want to be shown around so we top up our glasses and bring them along as I give them the obligatory guided tour.

  ‘Once the new roof’s on it’ll be sensational,’ says Joan approvingly at the end.

  I notice she seems to be smoking less and the absence of canine bouquet is quite startling. ‘Have you been back to the UK since I met you at Pisa?’ I ask. ‘And if not, how are those dogs of yours managing?’

  ‘I haven’t, no. Too much to do here. The dogs are fine. I rang the kennels the other day and far from pining away in my absence the rotten bastards are putting on weight. The hullabaloo at home seems to have died down and they say I could go back without getting lynched. So I may do that and bring the hounds over here.’

  ‘Bring them over? You’ll be staying here for longer, then? That’s good.’

  ‘Well,’ says Joan a little awkwardly, ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you but with all the bloody hubbub recently there hasn’t been a proper opportunity.’ She glances as Marta who … simpers. The only word. ‘Cutting through the bollocks and the lovey-dovey stuff, we’ve discovered that we’re natural shipmates. We go together like bacon and eggs, don’t we, Matti?’

  Matti? I suddenly remember that Marta’s younger sister Marja called her by this childhood nickname. By now we’re sitting on the terrace under a brand new awning out of which the June sunshine is beating a textiley smell of fresh waterproofing or something. Normally these admissions of romantic partnership merely make me raise a pair of cynical inward eyebrows while maintaining a bland expression of indulgent goodwill. Couples, for heaven’s sake. Dinky little dyads. One can’t take them seriously. Whenever I read that some creature like the brindled titmouse or the Pripet vole ‘pairs for life’ I am possessed with an immediate yearning for its extinction. I’ve always assumed this is perfectly normal for single people, regardless of gender. But now the idea of Joan and Marta becoming a domestic item does actually give me pleasure, although I expect the prosecco helps. I’ve grown rather fond of old Joan, and as for Marta I’m anxious that as composer of the moment she should be as settled and contented as possible. I even go and fetch a bottle of almost-the-best champagne to celebrate.

  ‘Crikey, Gerry, we didn’t come here to get slewed, you know,’ says Joan when we have all toasted each other’s new houses, new romances and ageing livers.

  ‘Still, now that you’re here … Though I think I’d better scratch us together some lunch otherwise we’ll get completely sozzled. But what news of your own house, Marta?’

  ‘Ah, the mustelje Benedetti comes to me the other day and says he has a very good offer if I am thinking to move.’

  ‘Which you bloody well are,’ adds Joan. ‘There’s no way a composer like you can go on working up there. The place is a frigging madhouse. Honestly, Gerry, if you thought it was bad a couple of weeks ago you should see it now. A constant stream of people, cars parked any old where so Matti can’t even get out of her own drive, hymn-singing and chanting and Christ knows what else. Can you believe an actual monk in a dressing gown came knocking on our door asking for a meal and a bed for the night? A complete twat. He kept on talking about carità and flashing his rosary. I soon sent him packing and he was a lucky monk not to get a swift kick in the beads for good measure. The nerve of the bloke! I’m glad Matti was busy with her music at the time because her Italian’s wonderful and she’s so kind she would probably have invited him in and wound up giving him our bed while we slept on the floor somewhere. Talk about a heart of gold, old softy here. I’m a much tougher proposition and it certainly helps not being able to speak much of the lingo. I’ve always found saying “bugger off!” works well in any language.’

  Before the champagne renders me legless I excuse myself and go in to get us some lunch. Luckily I have some homemade soup on the go – tomatoes, tarragon and nasturtium leaves, a very refined combo – so I pour it into a saucepan and set it down none too gently on the hob. Immediately, the forgotten screwdriver and uncapped marker fall off the edge of the hood and plop into the soup. Suppressing a chef’s giggle I fish them out and bin the marker, which has left some black streaks on the soup’s surface. If I allow my eyes to drift out of focus in a post-champagne sort of way it looks like one of those Second World War aerial photographs of the aftermath of a submarine sinking. I almost expect to see tiny people struggling in the slick. Behind me I hear somebody coming in from the terrace so I hastily give the soup a good stir and the black disappears. Every good cook has secrets from his guests that have nothing to do with recipes and techniques and everything to do with damage limitation. Soon we’re all eating outside under the sunshade, and with plenty of hot rolls and butter and another bottle of champagne nobody notices a thing.

  ‘So go on – what was Benedetti’s offer?’ I ask Marta bluntly.

  ‘Duecentomila. Two hundred thousand euros.’

  ‘Ludicrous!’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ agrees Joan. ‘I don’t trust that fellow, do you, Gerry? He looks like a ferret that’s been through a car wash. All gleaming and glistening, but still a sodding ferret. It’s a no-brainer. As a structure so close to a recent landslip the dear old place isn’t worth half that. In fact, it’s probably unsaleable. So if your signor Ferretti is offering two hundred thou, he’s obviously got a buyer with a specific purpose in mind, which means he’ll go a lot higher.’

  ‘Benedetti tells me he’s already had an offer for the land behind the house. Someone wants to put up a hotel, presumably for pilgrims and people like that ecclesiastical derelict you chivvied away.’

  ‘You’re a hero, Gerry. This is vital info … How did you get this lovely almondy taste in the soup?’

  ‘That’s a trade secret.’ I have already noticed the flavour she means, which although very pleasant has nothing to do with the official ingredients. It can’t possibly be prussic acid: they’d never allow cyanide in felt-tip ink, surely? ‘So what will your new asking price be? Half a million?’

  ‘Not on your nellie. A cool million but prepared to go as low as eight-fifty. I’m not having Matti taken for a ride. If they’re going to develop that site someone’s aiming to make a fortune out of it and they can ruddy well pay for the privilege.’

  Marta is looking doleful. ‘Is sad. I love my house but now is impossible to work there and the music is going so well, Gerree, I think. I have just written your song “Don’t cry for me, Kensington” which is very beautiful. The audience will go away singing this. Also that little beggar girl in Pakistan who is singing to Diana “There’s not much Versace / Here in Karachi”. At the end the audience, Gerry, I promise they will be clapped out.’

  ‘It sounds wonderful, Marta. I can’t wait to hear it.’

  ‘You can if I am not longer in Le Roccie.’

  ‘What Matti means,’ says Joan, covering her friend’s hand with her own square-nailed paw, ‘is that we really must get out of that house as soon as we can, Gerry. It’s interfering with her composing. Renting a suitable alternative at short notice may be tricky although I shall have a go. I suppose we’re obliged to do it through signor Ferretti, dammit, since he seems to have the biggest agency in town.’

  ‘He does. So long as Marta’s not a Moslem,’ I add jokingly.

  This provokes an outburst from Marta that reminds me very much of our first meeting when she engaged me in a passionate lecture about Voynovia’s long history of Christian resistance to godless Slavs. I was quite right about her religious affiliation. Marta’s nothing, but she’s a Moslem even less.

 
; ‘Anyway,’ says Joan, ‘in the short term she badly needs a workroom where she can put her piano. So we wondered if it would be possible to have a room here, Gerry, just as a temporary measure? You do seem to have a lot of spare space you’re not using. And as it’s your opera, too, it might be an advantage if both of you could work together under the same roof for a bit. You know, cross-fertilisation of ideas or whatever it is. It’s all a bit beyond an old sea-dog like me.’

  ‘Well, why not?’ I hear myself say even as a pocket of cells hiding out in a corner of my brain where the alcohol has still to penetrate is telling me I’m completely mad. Invite Marta to move in with that Iron Curtain upright of hers? Wasn’t that the very instrument of torture that first made my life hell up at Le Roccie? On the other hand this opera is a bid for international credibility and we artists often have to work in collaboration. Da Ponte and Mozart worked side by side on many occasions while The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte took shape. Surely Samper and Marta can follow in the same grand tradition for a strictly limited period? Especially now her new hygiene regime means my chances of catching head lice off her are much reduced? Also, of course, I’m paying her to write this music so it makes no sense to risk not getting my money’s worth. All in all, Marta’s temporary status as composer-in-residence at Sciupapiedi is one of those bullets made to be bitten.