Malcolm teases the dead mouse into the net. Its body, belly to the mesh, bends like a piece of soft mud. He looks across at Mr Morton: he is running his fingers over a section of the wall, with his cheek almost brushing the tiles, as if he were listening for something behind them. It is nearly half past ten. Stephanie will be coming home from the cinema about now.
‘What’s this?’ Mr Morton calls.
‘A medallion of carnations, white and tomato-red, on a turquoise background, with a frame of tulips. A Turkish theme,’ he explains, and he describes for Mr Morton the decoration of the walls and the star-scattered ceiling. ‘Shall we go out this way?’ he suggests, then he puts a hand under Mr Morton’s elbow to lead him back up to the ground floor, past the drinking fountain with the marble lattice, and the side room that houses the copper tubs in which guests could lie for hours in the restorative water.
five
I’m unhappy about last night’s call. My tone upset you, and I apologise. The telephone is not the ideal medium in these circumstances. Disembodied speech is too slippery, too susceptible to imprecision and misunderstanding. I should have waited until your return, but the damage is done now, and I have to repair it. Besides, we’ve skirted around the subject for too long. Neither of us has been inclined to talk openly about the situation until now, with the crisis almost upon us. So let me clarify my thoughts for you, without sound this time. Just words on a screen. My thoughts, with no objectionable tone, I hope.
The first fact, Claudia, is that I love you. You should not question this. It is the truth. I love you, but I do not need you. This also is the truth. I should not have said it, but it is true. I do not need you and I do not want to be in need of you, because that would be a diminution of my love for you. You say that you need me, but is that true? I don’t think that you need me, and I wouldn’t want you to need me. Your self-sufficiency is one of the qualities – one of the many, many qualities – I love in you. And it is important for me to remain as self-sufficient as I can. In London, at home, I can do that. In my rooms I know where everything is, precisely, and when I go outside I know where I am. It’s so many steps to one junction, so many steps to another. I can get to the park without anyone’s help; I know where the gates are, where to find the benches, which way the paths go. When I walk along the streets near my house, I know which voices I can expect to hear and where I can expect to hear them. I know which people are likely to talk to me, and I know something about them. I have friends here as well, of course, and these friends are especially valuable to me, because it’s hard to make new friendships: the blind can never choose whom to meet, only whom to pursue, as I did with you. On unfamiliar terrain, every step requires attention. But I am never entirely lost in England, even in places I have never been before, because I know what the sounds that surround me signify, and the most significant of these is the sound of people talking, of people speaking English. Overhearing the exchanges of strangers, I can generally understand what they are talking about – by which I mean that I understand the references they make, the allusions, the assumptions. I know that so-and-so plays football for Arsenal or that so-and-so is a disgraced MP. Every aspect of their speech makes sense to me. I can tell where they come from, I can infer relationships between the people speaking, can distinguish between the goodbye of close friends and the goodbye of acquaintances or of people who don’t much care for each other. It’s not much information, very little sometimes, but it gives me a degree of engagement with what’s outside me. It gives me material with which to construct a world for myself. In Italy I would be profoundly a stranger, knowing nobody but you, having to learn my environment by heart – an environment in a foreign language. In time I’ll learn it, you may say: we’ll make a home for ourselves, a place with which I’ll be as comfortable as I am in my London flat. I’ll learn the streets, sooner or later. I’ll make friends, I’ll understand what’s happening. Yes, I reply, the anxiety will lessen. But it will take a long time, I fear, and I will always be a far more remote outsider in Italy than I am in England. I comprehend several thousand Italian words, but I will never be Italian. With Leopardi I slog away for days at a single page. It’s a struggle, and I know that I am still missing undertones that would be obvious to any Italian schoolchild. Even if I spend the rest of my life pestering people for explanations, subtexts will always elude me. You have to understand that when I try to envisage this new life what I see is a condition of greater passivity and dependency, and I’m concerned – extremely concerned – that such a condition would not be good for us. You see? It’s not that I have any doubts about us as we are. I have none at all. If I did, the dilemma would not be as acute as it is. I love you. Which is where I started, so I’ll move on.
Life in the Oak has taken an interesting turn. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in the big painted room, listening to you reading ‘Il sabato’, when Mr Caldecott – Malcolm (we’re on first-name terms) – came in. I was in the mood for company and it seemed that he was too. A real conversation ensued. He told me a long story about the paintings in the room. The pictures sound dire – a rustic fantasy of picturesque peasants and buxom wenches – but the story behind them was rather touching. It was about the model for one of the figures, a young woman who used to live near here. She lived to be a hundred, and one of the staff knew her towards the end of her life, when he was a boy. I’ll give you the full version when you get back.
At the conclusion of Malcolm’s narration, which was lengthy and delivered with great aplomb, I rather felt that I owed him something in return, a repayment in kind, and I soon found myself gabbling about Leopardi – I suspect I gave an insufferably didactic performance. I told him a little about the book, and played him an excerpt from ‘Il sabato’ without disclosing the identity of the reader. I had the impression that he too was somewhat smitten by your voice.
In the evening, after I spoke to you, I went out into the garden to mull things over. I’d been there for half an hour or so, I’d guess, feeling wretched, when Malcolm again appeared. I’d thought before that there seemed to be something weighing on his mind. It turns out that the hotel is closing down. It’s being sold to new owners soon, which is one reason why the rooms are at a discount – to fill the place and go out on a high note. For the grand finale there’s going to be a big dinner on the last night, a nostalgic banquet in the style of the late nineteenth century, when the Oak was run by somebody called Croombe (I assume that’s the spelling). Croombe is involved in the story of the paintings, and he was the man who put the pool in the basement, which I think I told you about. Malcolm took me down there yesterday evening. It sounds gorgeous from his description: a Victorian–Ottoman confection of turquoise tiles and burnished copper pipes and marble fountains. The water’s on the chilly side of tepid – if the weather gets sultry again I may even be tempted into taking a dip. I’ve decided to stay on for a couple of days, as the work is going well here, and I feel I should go back to see the parents, to make amends. Malcolm’s offered me an even cheaper deal, for a single room on the top floor, whither my belongings shall be transplanted this afternoon. I’ll have the entire floor to myself: bookings have started to increase, but the tide hasn’t yet reached the upper storey.
That’s all I have to report. We should have signed a pact before you went away. Having postponed the big discussion until now, a couple more weeks of evasion would have been sensible. But then again, I wonder if we were both waiting until there was distance between us before letting the monster out of its cage. It’s possible. Well, it’s had a rampage now, so let’s try to leave it alone, and perhaps it’ll go to sleep for a while. A poor image, I know. It’s another way of apologising. You need to keep your mind clear for the next round with the professors of Perugia. Secure the job, then we’ll tackle the monster.
Please give my respects to your parents. I love you. That is a fact, dottoressa Pavolini.
The message sent, he goes downstairs to the breakfast room, where he sits at his usual
table and is briskly served by a woman who isn’t Eloni. Half a dozen tables are occupied this morning: there are couples in all corners of the room. First to his left, then to his right, then to the right again but farther, he hears the waitress’s voice: ‘Good morning. Ready? What would you like? Tea? Coffee? Certainly.’ Her skirt makes a whisking sound as she crosses the room. There’s the whack of the kitchen door, and in a mix he hears the bubble of boiling liquids, the chime of cups on saucers, the white noise of frying. Someone passes close to him, causing a draught that brings a strong smell of soap powder, a smell he associates with Eloni, but she doesn’t speak to him. After he has drained the last cup of coffee he remains at the table for a minute or two, in case Malcolm should be around. When he returns to his room he finds the door ajar. David and someone else are already at work, gathering his belongings for the removal to the upper floor. He retrieves the tape recorders and goes back downstairs to the Randall Room, where he is alone. He rubs his eyes, pressing firmly as if to suppress his rising disquiet, an agitation fuelled by things said during the previous evening’s conversation, and by his message to Claudia, which he should not have sent. He takes fast breaths of the lily-scented air, like a man who has almost suffocated. For a minute or more he draws on the perfumed air, until dizziness and vacancy are achieved, and he lets his head loll. On one side is the wedding and on the other side the fields. Fragments of the story of William Randall and Lily Corbin tumble in his mind. He takes hold of an episode, and considers the old man in the kitchen of the farmhouse, the lonely, cowardly, repentant artist, the ridiculous old man, rain-soaked and tattered, beseeching the farmer’s daughter, the implacable Lily Corbin, the stoical Lily Corbin. Trying to imagine a room in which this scene is happening, he fails to make the place cohere, seeing nothing but elements of it – a table, a door, a stone floor, two faceless, unformed figures. The door to the foyer opens again, but whoever has opened it does not come in. The becalmed atmosphere of the garden floods the room, the immense near silence of the countryside, a silence that has tiny threads of sound in it: the passing hush of a far-off car, a crow’s caw, an aeroplane miles above the hills. A phone rings.
He steps out onto the terrace. Testing the upper step with a heel, he dislodges a piece of stone. He slips and steadies himself, putting a hand on the low wall, then lowers his foot onto the stone flake. Tentatively he brings the other foot down. On the next step he stops, his toes having struck an empty clay pot. Behind him he hears the chortle of rubber-soled shoes on the waxed wooden floor, a quick, springy tread that he thinks is Eloni’s.
Seeing Mr Morton about to fall, Eloni throws the newspaper down and runs to the garden door. His right hand reaches out, twitching, seeming to beckon her. As she takes it he thanks her and says her name in a questioning way.
‘Yes,’ she says.
Mr Morton gives her hand a shake and smiles at it, as if he were holding a ball and was pleased with himself for catching it. Together they descend to the half-circle of paving stones at the bottom of the steps. ‘Do you have a minute?’ he asks, releasing her hand.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘There’s a place in the garden. A particular spot. I came upon it the other morning. The morning it rained?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to go to it now, but I’m not sure I could find it again. Not easily, anyway. So I was hoping you could take me there.’
‘You want me to help you in the garden?’
‘Please. If you have a minute.’
‘What place?’
‘A bench. A seat, under a chestnut.’
‘A chestnut?’
‘A big tree, with jagged leaves,’ Mr Morton explains, drawing the outline of a saw’s blade with his finger. ‘Near some roses. On the edge of the garden, by the wall.’
‘By the wall. I know where it is.’
‘It would be a help,’ he says, bending his elbow as if he can see her hand moving towards his arm.
Under the wooden arch she leads him, down the grass path that widens to make a circle around the sundial, which is glowing green in the morning sun. As they veer to the side of it, Mr Morton’s free hand skims over the bronze disc and the spike in the centre. ‘A sundial,’ he says, smiling at her. They go past the statue with the missing toes, past the lacy ferns and the hut. ‘Lovely morning,’ he says, smiling again, as if to encourage her to be as cheerful as he is.
‘Yes,’ she says, looking at her watch. To the left there is a long strip of grass and at the end of the strip is the bench. She could say to him that it is straight now, straight ahead, but the roots of a tree stick up through the grass halfway along, and he keeps smiling at her.
‘It’s going to be hot,’ he remarks, flicking a drop of sweat from his neck. ‘This time of year, it must be hot at home. In Ioannina. Much hotter than this.’
‘Yes,’ she says, and blushes. ‘It is very hot. Too hot sometimes.’
‘It’s in the north, you said?’
‘Yes. Soon you must be careful,’ she adds immediately, though they have not reached the roots yet. She gets in front and guides him with a hand on his wrist until they have passed the tree.
‘What is it like?’ Mr Morton goes on. ‘Could you describe it? How it looks.’
‘It is just a town. It is not a special place,’ she says, but still he wants her to talk. Holding his arm, she looks at him closely while he is asking her. His question seems simple. He does not think that she is lying: he wants to know what her town is like, that is all. And so she describes the district in which she lived in Ioannina by describing the streets around the house in which she was born. The market of Gjirokastër becomes the market of the Greek town; the mountains of her birthplace become the peaks around Ioannina; the fortress of Ali Pashë Tepelana in Gjirokastër becomes the fortress of Ali Pashë Tepelana in Ioannina. But when she talks about the lake that laps the walls of the fortress of Ali Pashë Tepelana it really is the lake of Ioannina she means, which did in fact turn pink in the setting sun, on the day she was in Ioannina. ‘It is very pretty,’ she says, feeling better because this part is true. ‘A soft white-pink, like apple blossom,’ she says, and she doesn’t feel bad at all now, because Mr Morton appears to be pleased by what she has told him, so it is more like telling a story than telling a lie.
‘Thank you,’ he says, brushing the seat with his fingers before he sits down.
‘I must go,’ she replies, and for some reason she does a small curtsy.
Mr Morton takes a little radio from each pocket and puts them down neatly beside him, one on each side. ‘Of course,’ he says, raising a hand for her to shake. ‘Thank you, Eloni,’ he smiles, holding on to her hand for a little bit longer, as if he can tell something from it.
‘I must go,’ she says again, and she runs back down the narrow grass path, past the hut and the ferns, past the statue and sundial. Coming to the pavement she slows down to catch her breath and walks round to the front of the hotel. On the desk eight keys are laid out. She gathers them up and goes to collect the trolley.
By midday all the occupied rooms have been cleaned and the rooms for today’s arrivals have been prepared. The last room she makes ready is the one into which Mr Morton will be moving. She puts out the soaps and shampoos in the bathroom, disinfects the toilet and polishes the mirror, and realises that this is a strange thing to do, but finishes polishing it anyway, and when that is done she flicks a duster over the TV and the wardrobe and the table, on which she places the wallet of writing paper and envelopes, even though Mr Morton will not need them. She makes up the bed and turns down a corner of the sheet. She is doing this when David comes into the room, bringing Mr Morton’s suitcase and shoulder bag, which he begins to unpack right away.
After putting the trolley back in the storeroom she looks into the Randall Room, hoping to see Mr Morton, so she can let him know that his room is ready, and be reassured that he does not suspect her, but he is not there. From the steps she scans the garden, but she doesn’t
find him. She changes out of her overall and into the pinafore she wears in the dining room, then goes back to the Randall Room, where there is nobody. Mr Morton does not appear for lunch, and when she leaves the hotel, at three o’clock, she still has not seen him.
She stops at her room for a cup of coffee and a sandwich. There is not enough time to wash her hair, but she puts on a clean shirt and jeans, and refreshes her lipstick before going out again. In the window of the chemist’s she reviews her reflection. Confident that she looks reliable, she begins the afternoon’s search, calling first at the Chinese restaurant in the lane behind the library, although she knows what they will say, that there are enough sons and daughters to run the kitchen. At the Indian restaurant they say the same thing, but on a lamp-post by the car park she sees a notice that says you can earn up to £50 an hour if you ring this number. She reads the number aloud, again and again, until she has remembered it, and walks back to the phone box in the High Street, repeating the number to herself all the way. The man says it’s easy money. He tells her she has a nice voice and calls her ‘love’. All you need is a phone, he tells her, and when she says she doesn’t have a phone he tells her to get one and try him again. But she cannot get a phone, she says. She cannot afford to get a phone. ‘Not my problem, love,’ the man says, and hangs up. She goes back to the car park and walks through it, to the street that curves down to Bath Road. On the far side of the traffic lights are the last three shops in the centre of town, sliced off from the other shops by the road. In the window of the newsagent’s there is a card from someone who needs a home help five afternoons a week, at a place she doesn’t recognise. She buys a chocolate bar and borrows a pen from the newsagent to write the name and phone number on her hand. When she asks him where this place is, he points through the window, looking bored. It is five miles away and no bus goes there.
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