by George

by Wesley Stace

  It was my hope that the Ansalones would tell her wonderful stories that I could never tell her without revealing the diary: of her father driving in on his motorbike, putting on shows in the town square, giving them chocolate, helping mend the roof. It would be a gift Frankie would love. The diaries, which told so many horrible truths, needn’t come into it. The Ansalones would remember another side of Joe, the Joe that Frankie wanted to remember: the father she knew from another man’s letters.

  Reg placed a bottle of whiskey ceremoniously in the middle of the table, standing back with folded arms to consider it for a second before he poured four glasses. Frankie turned to fretting about passports, hotels, bathing suits, and plane travel.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll work everything out. We’ll go when we’re ready.”

  “And whatever are you going to do with the money, Georgie?” asked Reg as he poured.

  “Put it somewhere safe until I decide. More school, perhaps.”

  Reg pushed the glasses towards the four points of the compass. “To George,” he said, and lifted his to the Romando. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer boy.”

  “To George,” we said, toasting my inheritance.

  “Good luck to you . . . both of you,” said Reg.

  It was the bandstand that did it, and the views of the sea lapping lazily at the house beneath a grand veranda where guests sipped elegant cocktails. The most adventurous of their companions enjoyed an idle game of croquet in the cool of early evening. The waiters, dressed in burgundy, their place of business a striped Venetian marquee, moved through the clientele as if invisible. A small ensemble played on the bandstand where Joe had once performed; a stately pleasure boat made one of its occasional paddling excursions into the sea.

  The moment I showed the travel agent the Ansalone address, he tapped the globe on his desk with a pencil and produced a vast array of pamphlets from distant drawers. Of these, one name caught my eye: the Villa Leopardi. “ ‘A break at this magnificent villa, nestling in the protective shadow of Mount Etna, with its splendid views of the Mediterranean, will ravish the senses and replenish the soul . . . ,’ ” I read aloud.

  “And break the bank . . . ,” discouraged the travel agent, appraising my price bracket by my age and clothes. He produced a pricing guide for local hotels, their relative costliness denoted by an increasing number of pound signs: the villa was not listed.

  “What kind of hotel is it?” Frankie asked later.

  “It’s nice,” I said.

  “Like that one we stayed at in Blackpool that time?”

  “Nicer.”

  Two weeks later, Reg dropped us off at Gatwick with a chirpy arrivederci. Frankie cried as though we were fleeing a war zone, giving Reg and Queenie up to certain death. The biggest good-bye, however, was for George; I even opened the box. “I remember the first time I ever saw you,” said Queenie. Reg had advised I keep him on me as hand luggage: “Don’t let that little beauty out of your sight.”

  Frankie had brought nothing to read, and after flicking through a catalogue jettisoned by a previous passenger, she treated herself to a glass of champagne, which made her chatty. When sea had dissolved into cloud and the journey had settled into a horizontal lull, a tensely uniformed stewardess approached and asked if Miss Fisher would by any chance mind signing a picture for the pilot. Miss Fisher was delighted to be recognized.

  “Can we go in the cockpit?” she asked, quick as you like, as though this were the standard bargain. The stewardess wiggled away to ask. “I’ve heard this works.”

  “Do you even want to go in the cockpit?”

  “Not really. But fair’s fair. Don’t you?”

  As we walked beyond first class, we felt very special. Show business: the ticket money can’t buy. With a bow, the copilot vacated the cockpit to make room for the VIP.

  “Perhaps a glass of champagne, Miss Fisher?” asked an identical stewardess as we ducked. And there we were, in the nose of the plane, my mother sitting next to the pilot and I standing behind her.

  “A Fisher out of water! What a pleasure,” said the pilot from behind his sunglasses and svelte moustache, as he paid the sky ahead no attention whatsoever. “Have you ever been in a cockpit before, Miss Fisher?”

  “I’ve never been in a plane before,” she said, as he gasped with excitement. “But I’ve always believed I could fly. All you have to do, children, is think nice thoughts.” Riding above the fleecy mattress of clouds, Frankie was ready to deliver a star turn. The reference, however, was lost on the pilot. “Like Peter Pan,” said Frankie in explanation.

  “Peter Pan?”

  “One of my favourite parts. Watch out for that cloud, Cap’n!”

  “Well, we all know you from Fish Out of Water, of course,” he said unapologetically. She obliged him with her catchphrase. I imagined him running his eyes up and down the passenger list for his next victim.

  As the channel passed far beneath, Frankie chatted away as though she were interested: a master class in undivided admiration for her hero of the skies. As far as she was concerned, it was all for my benefit, but I could drum up no interest in the cockpit, its incomprehensible dials and its suntanned regent on his great leather throne. I stared over their shoulders at the empty sky. I was here only because she would have been disappointed if I had gone back to my seat, only to make sure that she was safe. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she looked up at me. Isn’t this great? she asked silently. Somehow, she was in her element, up in the air, lost in the clouds, in Neverland.

  At the door of the Villa Leopardi a woman, who introduced herself as Muria, curtsied and gave Frankie a posy. Frankie rewarded her with the delighted appreciation that was to accompany every one of the many occurrences of good service at the Leopardi. I was expecting some kind of registration process, but we were merely relieved of our cases and passports.

  “A bottle of Prosecco?” Muria suggested in perfect English, generously offering us the run of the veranda with an understated sweep of her arm.

  “Thank you,” I said, as our feet crunched gravel, causing skeletal lizards to scuttle for shelter. We sat down at a table behind the house at the top of the steps that led down to the shore. An inconspicuous hotel employee immediately came to our aid, opening the umbrella to shield our eyes from the sun. Within moments, our bottle arrived, presented on a tray, which also contained glasses, an ashtray, three kinds of nut, and serviettes. I fumbled for my wallet, but the waiter brushed away my concerns; it was the last time I thought of money until the moment we left.

  “This is the life, eh?” asked Frankie, letting her head fall back so the sun was full on her, glinting on her black sunglasses. “Can we really afford this?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Toast George.”

  By our second glass, I had ceased to consider the whereabouts of our bags or worry when we would be shown our room.

  “Signore and Signorina Feesher,” said a man with a Germanic accent, whose body’s natural state was a deferential bow. “May I welcome you personally. I am Alberto Dilucca, the manager of the Villa Leopardi.”

  The three of us wasted no time looking at one another, gazing instead at the twinkling sea, as Dilucca politely enquired about our flight. I pictured the soldiers lying on the stony shore, waiting for orders, thinking of ways to kill time. Frankie asked for the ladies’ room. Dilucca lifted a finger, at which another tall elegant burgundy ghost escorted her away. There was a silence that did not require breaking, but Dilucca did not leave, maintaining his half bow, staring at the sea, until my mother had disappeared into the house.

  “Just one question, signore, to be quite certain. Your reservation; it says one room, two beds. We would hate to make a mistake.”

  “Yes, precisely. My mother . . .”

  He lifted his hand in apology, requiring no explanation. “Perfetto,” he said. “Mi scusi. Therefore, your room is ready.”

  So we settled into our week at the Villa Leopardi, where the outside wor
ld was easily forgotten. Every morning, we watched the removal of leaves that had had the temerity to fall during the night, then the raking of the gravel that they might possibly have disturbed. Our room itself was a mystery of artful, effortless perfection, from the seemingly self-replenishing supply of Prosecco and almond biscuits to the petals (which we had no alternative but to guiltily flush away) sprinkled daily in our toilet. Any loose clothing laid aside or absentmindedly dropped was cleaned and pressed by the evening, then returned to our wardrobe, in some cases in a better state than it had originally been bought. Messages from the hotel were left on the pillow, handwritten on elegant monogrammed notepaper adorned with a little ribbon fastened to the top corner with a pin.

  It was as if this were all free — and much of it came with the price of the room. Everything else was on account, and there would be a healthy reckoning on the judgement day of departure, but the villa provided an atmosphere in which it felt unnecessarily strenuous to keep up with one’s expenditure. And at night, the orchestra played from the bandstand, melodies shared by accordion and violin, accompanied only by the waves lapping at our feet as the stars shimmered above.

  There was a little debate as to whether we should get our business out of the way early or leave it until the end. I knew the distance to the Ansalone house, and with much concerned help from the concierge — such as there was a concierge; the place was so elegant that there was barely even a front desk — I planned our route and even our mode of transport. The villa had apparently never before fielded a request for a motorbike with a sidecar, but it was the staff’s avowed intent to create the illusion that everything was at their fingertips, so, although I saw a momentary cloud of concern pass over Fabrizio’s face, I saw no more, and by the end of the third day, a splendidly old-fashioned dark green motorbike, complete with sidecar, was parked at our disposal in front of the villa. I didn’t even think to wonder whether or how much it cost. The place did that to you.

  Because the Ansalones were not expecting us, and when no phone number could be found for them in the local directory, we decided to interrupt our leisure right in the middle of the week. If they weren’t there, we could leave them our address at the hotel, where they would still have three days to contact us. And as we waited, we whiled away the time by the swimming pool, where only the slow pan of the sun, and the irregular interruptions of hand-delivered gelato and ginger drinks, told us time was passing. Topless was the way to go, but Frankie was not seduced: “I’m not showing them on TV and I’m not showing them here either.”

  “Ricky wants to get back together,” she murmured idly into the warm balsam air, as though she had been thinking about it for hours. “Says I’m right to trust my instincts.” I didn’t say anything. “But he should have known that all along, shouldn’t he? Besides, my instincts should be his instincts, shouldn’t they?”

  She wanted to be in musicals, in pantomime, not situation comedies and sex romps — and we made a plan: no more family friends, no more agencies where Echo’s name was still a valuable entrée. We would research who represented everyone Frankie admired, and Frankie, who still had a name and could, would meet with these agents one by one until she found the perfect candidate.

  That evening, the timing was right. There was still more of the holiday remaining than we had already enjoyed. We had made our decisions about her work and were to transact our main business, including what I hoped would be a treat for Frankie, the next day.

  When the sun finally exhausted itself, we waited for the abundant assortment of petit fours and candied fruits — dainties, Frankie always called them — that accompanied any order of tea or coffee, obviating the need for dessert. I excused myself, went up to the room, and fetched the photo album.

  At the table, I reached for her hand; her eyes reflected the torches flickering around us. She had acquired a warm glow in the sun, her hair blonder than ever. When I put the photo album on the table between us, her moment’s frown turned quickly into impish curiosity: more than anything else, she loved a surprise. I could think of nothing else to say. “My grandfather lent this to me.”

  She smiled at the mention of grandfather, but when she saw the name on the spine, her eyes closed; she subconsciously withdrew her hand from mine and inhaled asthmatically. When we touched again, she flinched as though there were static. Opening her eyes, she couldn’t look at me and in her disorientation didn’t know what to do. I shifted my chair over to hers and put my arm around her. Her head rested on my shoulder.

  “Oh, Georgie, Georgie. We never found the right moment. It was always too late,” she said, as she put her arms around me. “You’ve only me now.”

  “I know.” I turned the album page by page, stroking her back, soothing her. The nightmare was over. She couldn’t speak for some time, though she didn’t cry.

  In a pouch at the back of the album, there were some clippings. “Actors Drawn to School Charity Event,” whispered a modest headline, above a photo of five people: a headmaster; Frankie, showing her dimples; Donald, the drama teacher; and two smiling children. “Had the boys been nervous working with seasoned professionals?” the paper asked of teacher “Donald Hartly.” “They put us all at our ease. The kids listened to everything they said, and it was a real privilege for all of us.” “It’s a very worthy cause,” said Frankie, who would be appearing in Mother Goose at Worthing.

  She didn’t need to read the piece. She remembered it quite well. She had loved his quiet way with the children, his calm, gentle authority. In some ways, it reminded her of her own father. She had been in no way prepared for her first experience of his depression. Whether it was brought on by their affair or its collapse, she couldn’t remember: the whole thing was over before it began.

  By the time she found out she was pregnant, she had realized that she was alone, that Donald, who was on permanent sick leave from his job, could offer no support. She had turned to Evie, of course, as she did for everything. Evie had always encouraged Frankie to come to her, to think of her first. And in return for this loyalty, she fought tooth and nail for Frankie; most particularly, for her career, the sum of Frankie’s parts.

  Evie, surveying the evidence at hand, had declared him, and his entire sex, useless. That was what you got for straying outside the theatre. He was a weak man, unworthy of her; it was Evie who suggested that Des save the day. All Frankie’s dreams played second fiddle to her career. They could manage perfectly well without Donald’s help, and the baby would lack for nothing. They all did what Evie said. She had never made any bones about what Queenie was being punished for, why Sylvia was not the star package Frankie was.

  Frankie had never seen Donald again, though she had written, care of his parents. Queenie had known nothing of Donald and was allowed to draw her own conclusion about the pregnancy — the charming theatrical entrepreneur, with the racing cars and centre court tickets, who had taken such an interest in Frankie’s career and who indeed had charmed the girl on occasion. Nothing was done to disabuse Queenie. No wonder Frankie had only shrugged when told of his death. She had barely known the man, and she’d never been in control of what Queenie told me. And suddenly, there it was: the fiction became fact, something everyone knew, though Frankie had never even commented upon it. Evie just laughed. It was her and Frankie’s secret. Queenie presumed that the Upside fees had been donated by some similarly extravagant benefactor.

  Frankie murmured apologies, telling me what she remembered of my father, his illness, his hospitalization, the decisions they had had to take about me. I told her about Donald, as I had known him.

  “Do you wish I’d told you?”

  “I saw you at the funeral,” I said. “You told me by not telling me. But I didn’t dare know. It was too lonely.”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. “I wish I’d told you too,” she continued. “We were always waiting for a better moment: when he was better, when Des was better, when Evie was better, when I was better.” I had never heard her use the word we
to mean, rather than the Fisher matriarchy, two parents who made mutual decisions they thought best for their son, for me. “It was never the right time, and then, when he was gone, I couldn’t see the point. I just wanted everything to be as it had always been. I was afraid everything would change.”

  “I had to know.”

  “I know. And I’m glad you do. But . . .” She stared out at the sea, divided in half by a shimmering moon. Thoughts glimmered on her lips. “But I don’t have to know. I don’t want to know anything more than I already do. . . . In such a night, eh?” She looked at the twinkling stars, the faltering Christmas-tree lights strung above our heads, and, lost in the immeasurable, stroked her arm. She remembered what she was saying. “Dad . . . Donald . . . Des . . . Evie . . .” She paused at length between each name, telling me their stories in the silence — the father she never had; the invalid who couldn’t look after us; the older man she didn’t love who could; the woman who had delivered her a career and taught her secrecy, as if life, the whole play, could be manipulated from backstage, plotted and blocked. Frankie had known little else. “And then I thought we were losing you too, and I cursed him all over again for your inheritance; but you came back, and here we are. This is the beginning of a new life for me, a new career, a new family, a second chance. And I don’t want to know anything more. I just want things to be like they are right now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing will change any more.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  The waiter approached almost apologetically with the tower of diminutive desserts.

  “Fancy a dainty?” She laughed. “We’ll tell Queenie. That was another thing the time was never right for. Poor Donald.”

  That night, we lay next to each other in our single beds. I remembered a conversation.

  “Donald asked me about you once. It surprised me.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said you were like a character in a fairy story.”