It is a very old thing, this card. More than thirty years old. But sometimes the years are like days. Sometimes you were a child yesterday and it is a terrible thing when you count how many years are gone. For my mother this card from Antonietta, this message with the little red heart and the arrow, this betrayal, it happened yesterday. She reads the message to him and it means more than the words are saying. The words are not important – the meaning is underneath them. She is jealous. It is ridiculous, but she is jealous. She accuses my father of deceiving her. She was watching him when he read the card, she tells him. He sighed when he read it, she says. He denies this. She insists that he sighed. I didn’t – you did – I didn’t – you did. So I sighed, he confesses. But not for Antonietta – for the time that has passed since then. Mother of God! What a thing to say! It has been a happy time, he tells her. A very happy time, he says, but now I’m old, he explains. It would be good to be younger, with you, he says. But it’s too late for explaining – she’s gone, out of the room, out of the apartment.
To understand this drama you must have a missing piece of the puzzle. Who is Antonietta? When she wrote the postcard she was Antonietta Venuti, the daughter of a farmer who lived not far from Recanati. A very wild and sexy girl who gave her parents worries because all the boys liked her and she liked all the boys. Antonietta was not liked by all the girls, of course, and was very much not liked by the girl who would become my mother, who was a bit of a goody-goody and never gave her parents any worries. So Antonietta Venuti was a girl who broke many hearts and had very many boyfriends before she married the electrician Roberto Pallucchini, whose son Paolo did not look very much like his father, some people said. There was gossiping about the boy, but Antonietta and Roberto did not give any attention to it. They were happy for some years, the three of them, then Roberto died in an accident when he was not even forty. A mistake by the boy who was working with him, and it killed him in the street, in the middle of the day, so lots of people saw him die. It was terrible. He was putting up lights for a festival, on a stage for dancing and singing that night. Lying on the stage under a string of flags, dead as iron. Paolo took up his father’s business and his mother locked herself in her apartment and never went outside.
For years she stayed in her rooms, seeing nobody except her son. After five or six years she came out again and now she was no longer pretty. She was much more than pretty: she was splendid. When she was younger she was always paler than the other girls, but now her skin was the colour of cream, like those ladies in earlier times who never let the sunlight touch them. And her hair – which was unusual also, because it was red as rust – it seemed even more bright now her skin was so white. It seemed to burn around her head, like a halo. She had become thin in her body and in her face, in a way that made her eyes huge and gave her a nobility she did not have before. In every way she was changed. Before she was mad about new clothes; now she wore plain dark dresses, very simple, very ordinary. Before she was a real talker; now she spoke when she had to speak to somebody, that was all. Now every day she went to mass, and after mass she went to the shops. She never talked about her husband or anything that she had ever done in her life. She is still in Recanati, living alone, in the apartment she shared with her husband and son. You see her every morning, on her way to the church. Sometimes you see her with Paolo or his children, but not often. All the women who hated her when they were young, when she took all the boys they liked, now they look at her with respect or pity, or as if she has something saintly about her. My mother looks at her in this way, but now the sight of the widow Pallucchini is making her jealous too – truly jealous, I think, though it’s about something that is dead and was never very alive, so my father says. And the jealousy is bad because the reason for it is this woman who has suffered and become sort-of-holy. So father will now reason with mother and life will be normal again soon, because really he did not do anything wrong and they have always loved each other, my father and my mother, in their way, which I know is a strange way sometimes. But love is always a strange way, no?
I almost forget: tomorrow night Monica and her husband Bruno are inviting me to their house to eat with them. I will phone if it is possible, but I think it will be a long evening, because we all like to talk and it is a very long time since I have seen Bruno. But the day after, for sure, we will speak, you and I. But you must tell me the number of the hotel – you forgot to do it.
What other things are happening in Recanati? I have met Pierluigi’s girlfriend, the magical Graziana. She is beautiful. But of course she is. Pierluigi cannot see girls who are not beautiful. Ugly girls are invisible for him. Graziana’s mother is from Finland, so she is tall and blonde, with big blue eyes. And big big breasts. They are really amazing – you could hang an umbrella on them. Two umbrellas. I am sure she did not buy them from a doctor, because they do a little wiggle-wiggle swing when she walks. La Stupenda I call her. Pierluigi is very happy. Now he might not come to the villa. He wants to stay here to play with Graziana and her breasts. I am full of envy. My mother has the widow Pallucchini to make her miserable and I have Graziana’s breasts. Ha ha – I wish. Perhaps you wish too? Goodbye. She has good legs too. Bye bye.
Easing back in the chair, he brings to mind the melodiously deep voice of Claudia’s father, and his study full of books, and he remembers the sweet lemon fume that rose from the pot of tea he had set on the desk. The door had been closed, to shut out the sound of Claudia and her mother, who were talking in the kitchen. ‘We leave the women for a while,’ said her father, leaning forward to touch his wrist. ‘I must read you something,’ he said, taking a book from the desk. ‘Some sentences from Mr Burton. There are some words that escape me. I hope you will know them.’ He read a lengthy paragraph, with quirks of pronunciation and stress that he had passed on to his daughter. ‘It is superb, yes? Superb, sublime.’ It was the day after the visit to the Leopardi house and her father wanted to know if Claudia had told him about the coachman’s daughter? Did she tell him about the Contessa’s religious madness? About the way the great library was assembled? ‘Good, good,’ he commented at each reply, until at last he discovered something that Claudia had failed to mention: the public examinations of Giacomo, Carlo and Paolina, who were obliged by their father, Count Monaldo, to answer in Latin the questions relating to history, Christian doctrine, grammar and rhetoric that were put to them by the eminent citizens of Recanati. And later that day, at supper, Claudia joked to her father that he was as bad as Count Monaldo, and complained about the English exercises he used to make them do, every night, making them learn poems they did not understand.
In reply he writes:
I can think of a couple of anatomical corrections that might indeed be of benefit to us, but breasts like La Stupenda’s are not what I have in mind, however remarkable those protrusions may be. Though I wish your brother great joy with the beautiful big chest, I prefer the dimensions of yourself and Marie Antoinette, whose exquisitely modest bosom was said to be the inspiration, as you might know, for the shape of the champagne glass. But did you know that the breasts of Joan of Aragon – Juana la Loca, the mad mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V – were reputed to exude a perfume of ripe peaches? I think we need hear no more of Graziana and her wiggle-wiggles.
Thank you for the story of your parents and the widow Pallucchini. I am pleased that harmony is returning to the home. I have to say that I don’t find your mother’s jealousy at all ridiculous. Envy is something I experience every day, but I have not experienced jealousy and I sometimes wish that I could, because evidently I am missing something. If I could see, then I could be very jealous, I am sure. Seeing the handsome Recanati boys you once kissed – that might make me as jealous as your mother. Is Bruno one of them? As it is, they don’t really exist for me, not substantially enough for retrospective jealousy, though I can envy them for having seen you, and seen themselves being seen by you.
As for my parents, the visit was not a success. I d
id try not to become irritated with my mother, but I made an insufficient effort, I fear. There’s something in her manner that suggests she regards her son’s misfortune as her fault and/or her burden in life, and the way she fusses around me makes me feel like a perpetual convalescent. I shouldn’t complain about her, I know – it was hard for her, bringing me up, and she did everything possible to make my childhood happy. And it was happy, by and large. I am grateful to her, and I do love her, but an hour of her company makes me want to go out and chop down large trees with a very big axe. With my father, on the other hand, there is no friction. What we have is a guilt-sodden truce. He seems to be afraid of me sometimes, and guilty at being afraid. And I think he doesn’t really like me all that much and feels guilty for that as well, while I feel guilty for whatever it is that he doesn’t like. I wonder sometimes how we came to be like this. My impression is that we moved in symmetry, my father withdrawing as I withdrew into blindness. I seem to remember that we understood each other better when I could see something of him, but this may not be true. I don’t know. I’ve started maundering. To conclude: I was a boorish lump and must go back soon, to make amends.
While I’m thinking of it, I think your French phrase is esprit de l’escalier.
And what of life at the Oak? I’m still rattling around in it like one of the last biscuits in the barrel, yet Mr Caldecott, the manager, seems to be permanently on duty: he was at the desk when I first arrived, when I went downstairs to dinner in the evening and when Charlotte picked me up yesterday morning, and he was still around when I came back. I went for a wander in the garden before breakfast this morning and lo! – he’s there again. I can’t imagine what’s keeping him busy. Perhaps an inundation of coach parties is imminent, but I rather doubt it. We had a talk, the manager and I, after Charlotte had deposited me back here. A brief but pleasant chat, out in the garden, from which I learned that Mr Caldecott is a divorced hotelier with a preference for the rural life. I like him. His jib is a pleasing jib, you might say. I have also conversed, in a desultory fashion, with a member of Mr Caldecott’s staff. Her name is Eloni, she’s from northern Greece and that’s about all I know. She’s not the most voluble character, which is a pity because she has a fine voice: low and laryngitic, like a 100-a-day smoker.
No time for Leopardi yesterday, but I feel that work will go well today. Your message has gingered me up for a long stretch at the desk. Speak soon?
He adds the phone number of the Oak, and as soon as his reply has gone he resumes the translation of Leopardi. At four o’clock he rings reception to ask if he might order a plate of sandwiches and a pot of lemon tea. It is the manager himself who takes the call and who ten minutes later brings the tray, and places it on a table to the side of the bureau, and then departs, having made his presence as unobtrusive as possible.
Back in his office, Malcolm continues to leaf through the bills and memoranda and other ephemera from the time of Croombe’s ownership: receipts for quantities of insulating cork, bolts of damask, crates of Bordeaux wine, chairs to be supplied by Maple & Company of Tottenham Court Road. Annotations by Croombe appear in the margins of advertisements and brochures issued by fine hotels in Paris, in German spas, in Swiss resorts, in New York. ‘Flowers in every room, replaced daily,’ he has written beneath a view of the river frontage of the Savoy; ‘140 rooms!’ he exclaims on the back of a print depicting the Baur-en-Ville in Zürich; the single word ‘Cost?’ appears above an engraving of Stockholm’s Grand Hotel, connected by a loop of faded ink to a line announcing M. Cadier’s installation of steam-powered lifts. But the most charismatic of these items are the notebooks, small black leather notebooks with marbled endpapers and finely lined pages that have become as fragile as dead leaves, in which Croombe records his impressions of the building site on the Boulevard des Capucines, his introduction to the ‘captivating and capricious’ Sandrine Koechlin and, in 1872, the week that he and Sandrine spent at the Hôtel Splendide. Every meal that he and his wife ate in the hotel is recorded in detail, with observations on the appointments of their suite and the dining room, and then, halfway through the week, there is a conversation with the maître d’hôtel, a young Swiss by the name of César Ritz. ‘In equal proportion he possesses both ambition and discretion, and he displays a purposefulness that is quite remarkable in –’ he is reading when the phone rings and a woman’s voice says, ‘It’s me.’
They have not spoken to each other for months, but she speaks as if continuing an argument that had been interrupted earlier that day. ‘Hello, Kate,’ he replies. ‘How are you?’
‘What’s this all about, Malcolm?’
‘What’s what all about?’
‘You know perfectly well. This letter to Stephanie,’ she says crisply. ‘What do you think you’re playing at? Going behind my back.’
‘I was not going behind your back.’
‘You didn’t tell me. I’d say that’s going behind my back.’
‘Kate, I was not going behind your back.’
‘So why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because she asked me not to.’
‘She asked you.’
‘Yes, she asked me not to tell you yet, so I didn’t.’
‘So why do you think she asked you to do that?’
‘Because she didn’t want you to know yet, clearly.’
‘And you think that’s OK? She says “Let’s not tell Mum, eh?” and you just go along with it.’
‘No, I don’t just go along with it. Why don’t you ask her to read you what I wrote –’
‘I’ve read what you wrote.’
‘I see.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘That I’m surprised you open her mail.’
‘I found it in her room.’
‘Addressed to Stephanie.’
‘That’s not the point. The point is –’
‘The point is that you read it.’
‘Yes, I read it. I’m not going to apologise for finding out what you wrote to our daughter.’
‘And you think that’s permissible? Reading something addressed to her, a private correspondence.’
‘The point is, Malcolm, that I have a right to know about this. I have a right to know what’s going on.’
‘Well, that was my point exactly. As you know, having read my letter.’
Her breathing becomes quieter, as if she is holding the phone away from her mouth, and then she resumes, at the same pitch as her first words, ‘So she wrote to you? Out of the blue, just like that, she wrote to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t start it?’
‘No, Kate, I didn’t start it. I’ve thought about it, I’ve wanted to do it, I don’t think any court would have convicted me if I had done it, but no, I didn’t.’
‘One day, after all these years, she gets it into her head to write to you.’
‘Apparently.’
‘This is a girl who hasn’t mentioned your name since God knows when. So why does she suddenly get this notion to send you a letter?’
‘Ask her, Kate. I don’t know. I was as surprised as you. You’ll have to talk to her.’
‘I will, don’t worry,’ she says.
In the pause he hears a tapping, perhaps of a pen on a table-top. ‘Kate?’ he asks. ‘Why are you so agitated about this?’
‘I’m not agitated,’ she retorts. ‘I’m livid. Absolutely bloody livid.’
‘But why?’
‘That’s a really dim question.’
‘Then tell me. I know this is confusing. It’s confusing for both of us. But why are you so angry that Stephanie wants to see me?’
‘What I’m angry about is you two scheming behind my back.’
‘We’re not scheming. I’ve explained.’
‘Malcolm, even if you’re not scheming, she is.’
‘That’s not how I’d put it.’
‘It’s how I’d put it.’
‘I’m sure she has good reasons for going about it thi
s way.’
‘Do you now?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And what do you imagine these good reasons would be?’
‘I don’t know, Kate, do I? You tell me.’
‘Good reasons,’ she repeats, and he hears her whisper: ‘Jesus Christ.’
This curse, uttered wearily, as though to herself, sets off an echo in his mind, an echo of conversations he does not want to recall. ‘I can’t very easily –’ he begins.
‘I don’t need this, Malcolm,’ she goes on. ‘I really don’t need this.’
‘Don’t need what? Talking to me?’
‘Oh Christ,’ she sighs again. ‘I tell you what: I don’t even think she does want to see you. And that’s the truth. I think she’s doing this to get at me.’
‘But a minute ago you were complaining that she didn’t want you to know.’
‘I’d have known sooner or later.’
‘Kate, what is going on there? I should know. Has something happened?’
‘Nothing’s happened. Life’s lumbering on. She’s a nightmare to live with, and I’m fed up with it.’
‘I think we should discuss this.’
‘No, we don’t need to discuss it. It’s not your problem. It’s mine. Robert’s and mine.’
‘She’s my daughter.’
‘Not any more. You don’t know her now.’
‘Well, that’s about to change.’
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