“Have you decided?”
She had not read a word of the menu and hastily began to. Fortunately Dennis was preoccupied with his own choice.
“I know I ought not to have cannelloni, I meant to have got some weight off here, but I’ve come to the wrong country, all this pasta, and I drink more than is good for me at the Rondini because there so often isn’t anything else to do, and it takes the edge off listening to Miranda and Martin quarrelling. I think I will have cannelloni all the same, and the spezzatini of veal cooked in marsala, but I won’t have any potatoes with those, I’ll have a green salad: well, perhaps I’ll have just a very few potatoes, after all I’m doing a lot of swimming, if you can call it swimming in that rose bowl. What about you?”
“I’ll have the same.”
“What I like about you, Flora, is that you’re clever without wanting to make other people feel stupid. You are clever, aren’t you?”
“I think I’m quite good at my job.”
“Some clever people are so mischievous. I should be married to Miranda now if Martin hadn’t made her see me as a fool. Of course I’m not an intellectual.”
“That’s not the only way of being clever.”
“It’s the only way he thinks worth considering. I daresay if he had to deal with some of the real life problems that I come across in a general solicitor’s work he might realize that it takes a good deal of practical ability to keep anything in the world going. Especially nowadays. However he’d have made trouble for anyone that Miranda was married to. I don’t know why but he would. Well he’s got his work cut out now.”
“How do you mean?”
“Nothing. This chianti is excellent, don’t you think? We’ll have another carafe. It was Croft who suggested that you should come out here, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m very grateful to him for thinking of it. I was rather startled at the idea of staying with somebody I’d never even heard of until that minute. But it’s a lovely holiday. Miranda has been so kind to me. I’m devoted to her.”
“She has great charm.”
He looked sad as he said this and sat for a minute without speaking. Then he drank off another glass of chianti and smiled at Flora.
“The world, fortunately, is full of charming women. I’m sure your visit here has been just as nice for Miranda as it has for you. But Martin didn’t think of it only out of kindness.”
“Why, then?”
Shaking off something, Dennis said more casually,
“Oh, he’s always got some private game of his own. This place isn’t bad, is it? I think they cook better than the much vaunted Agatina. We must come here again … or we might go and have a day in Siena. How long are you staying here?”
“Miranda asked me to stay on into September and go back to England with her.”
“Did she? Isn’t she sure that Madame of La Boutique is coming, then?”
“Pauline? Oh yes I think she’s coming, fairly soon.”
“Well if you want to go home earlier I shouldn’t hesitate. Just do whatever suits you. That’s the only way to deal with the Crofts. I didn’t unfortunately learn it soon enough. This place is getting fearfully hot, isn’t it, now it’s filling up? If you’re ready we might as well set out for home.”
“I must say it’s pleasantly cool out here.”
Dennis with renewed energy jerked himself up out of his deck chair on the loggia. “I’m not sure I won’t go over and have a dip in the pool after all. Do you feel like coming, Flora?”
“I think I’ll just stay here and be lazy. I want to write a letter.”
“Right. Enrico says they’re all out except Martin who has a headache and is asleep upstairs. If he comes down will you tell him I’ve still got his car because Miranda is out in hers, but I shan’t be long.”
Flora fetched her writing case and settled herself comfortably in a long chair on the loggia. She wanted to read Nan’s poems again, and to write to her about them. The poems were good, better than she had thought at first, except for a couple of weak lines in one. Because she would never be able to show them to Hugh they lacked resonance for her, but that was not Nan’s fault. Her letter was not easy to write because the love poem made it clear that Nan was afraid that Ralph was abandoning her. Flora wanted to offer sympathy without touching the girl’s fiery pride. She was so much absorbed in this that she did not hear Martin come out onto the loggia until he was standing near her. Glancing up she thought that above his bright blue shirt his face looked sallow, his eyes dark ringed. Flora was beginning to realize that he was less self-sufficient than he always seemed.
“Have you seen Ludo?”
“Enrico said they all went to bathe.”
“Good God! We went to bathe this morning. Miranda has a morbid obsession about that pool.”
“I expect the young ones wanted to bathe again.”
“Ludo was going for a walk with me in the woods after the siesta. I don’t suppose he wanted to bathe again at all. I expect Miranda swept him off. She always must dominate everybody. Ludo is much too gentle and polite to be able to resist her.”
Flora thought that probably both Ludo and Dulcie did prefer bathing twice a day to sleeping or talking. Martin walked away to the far end of the loggia and she went on with her letter. A minute or two later he was back beside her.
“What do you think of him? Of Ludo?”
“He’s a very beautiful boy and pleasant to everybody. He seems to be enjoying himself very much here. That’s all I know about him so far except that he’s been up at Oxford. I suppose he’s just come down.”
“No, he came down two years ago.”
“Really? He seems so young. What does he do—”
“That’s the problem.”
Martin dropped into a chair next to hers.
“It’s a sad little story. Ludo’s father was a college servant for years. He conceived a great admiration for the Oxford colleges and for the young gentlemen who were educated there. He believed an Oxford degree to be a key that would open any door. He was as snobbish as the most snobbish don and far more chauvinistic about Oxford, and his particular college. When he was nearly fifty old Sawley married—an extremely pretty girl—Ludo is just like her. Her father kept a sweet and tobacco shop just over Magdalen Bridge near where the Cowley and Iffley roads divide. She was the only child. Sawley retired from the life of servitude in the college and ran the shop with his father-in-law, afterwards with his wife.
“Ludo was the late-born child of this marriage. From the beginning Sawley’s ambition was to send him up to Oxford as an undergraduate. The shop at that time was doing very well and Sawley saved from the day the boy was born. He kept in touch with the college, went back to help out with garden parties and commem balls and so on. Everyone had liked Sawley, he was decent, civil and hardworking. Everyone knew about his ambition for the boy.
“Ludo isn’t intellectual, though he’s more intelligent than he sometimes makes himself out to be. Sawley imbued his wife, who was a simple girl, with his own passion. They both drove the boy on. They sat over him while he did his homework in the evenings, they got extra coaching for him. They really led the poor child rather a life of it, but he’s an obliging character; he was devoted to both his parents, his mother especially. He managed to get a reasonable number of O Levels, and later on one not brilliant A. Just before this old Sawley died. The college in pious memory of their old servant found a place for Ludo.
“His mother called and wept tears of gratitude in the Master’s study. ‘If only his father could have known.’ She assured the Master, who no doubt was getting her out of his room as quickly as he could, that old Sawley would be praying for him constantly in Heaven.
“How did Ludo get on?”
“You must know the kind of boy or girl who can deal with O Levels fairly well, who manages to scrape an A or two, but after that can’t go any further, is really unfit for university work?”
“I do indeed. We try to catch them in the
net but I’ve had one or two of them. Back-breaking for us, and often heart-breaking for them.”
“Well that’s Ludo. I came across him early in his second year, when both he and his tutor were feeling the strain, though Ludo didn’t know why. His mother, now running the shop alone, was still madly proud of him. I was sorry for the boy and tried to help him. I stood him a reading party in the vac with a man I knew was good, and I gave him some coaching myself. But I realized after a few weeks that he wasn’t going to make it and he didn’t. He was ploughed.
“His mother gave him a hell of a time. She carried on as if he had murdered his father and danced on his grave. Life at home was so desperate for Ludo that I carried him off with me for a holiday in the Pyrenees.
“He’d never done anything of that kind before. Not only never been out of England, but never encouraged to enjoy himself. Enjoyment wasn’t an object in the Sawley household. Seeing him discover it made my holiday.”
“I can well imagine that.”
“Of course the question was what to do with him when we got back. It had always been understood that if he got a degree he would become a teacher; if not, but they hardly considered that contingency, he would have to help with the shop. He had never been allowed to develop any personal preference, but when he was liberated on that holiday he told me he would much rather help with the shop; he had helped in any spare time he had and liked it.
“But I thought it was time he got away from mother and from father’s reproachful shade. There was a lot of demolition and rebuilding going on around their neighbourhood. It seemed to me likely that before long the shop would be replaced by a supermarket, and he wouldn’t like working in that. They might not take him on anyhow.
“So what to do with him? I thought he might be good at some kind of publicity and advertising work. Charm has a market value in that world.
“I sent him up to London to a friend of mine who runs a public relations agency. He advises firms on their publicity and handles it for them, and he sometimes places one of his young men with one of them. Ludo has been with him for two years now.”
“Is it a success?”
“No. My friend didn’t want to sack him but wants him to go. He says that Ludo never sees an opportunity and is entirely without drive. I think that may be because he had been so much driven, all the time he was growing up. I keep on hoping that he will develop some kind of purpose or ambition.”
“Does he want to make money?”
“He likes it. He likes having it spent on him. He’s as pleased with a present as a child. But I don’t know that making money, a lot of it, is anything that comes into his scheme of things.” Martin swung round on Flora.
“I suppose you are thinking that I spoil him?”
“I was just wondering if after all he wouldn’t be happier in the shop. If the family shop came to an end, he would always get a job in another one.”
“But what a life!”
“You say it’s what he likes doing.”
“Yes, but oh, I suppose I don’t want all old Sawley’s efforts to be wasted.”
“Would they be if Ludo was good at any job and liked it?”
“He’d soon lose that flower-like delicacy.” Martin stopped short and Flora suppressed a laugh.
“You understand,” Martin said stiffly, “I’m just sorry for somebody who has been confused by other people’s obsessions. I don’t like muddles and I should like to clear this one up.”
It seemed to Flora that it might be better if at last Ludo was left to find his own way.
Martin rose and began to walk up and down the loggia. Flora resumed her letter. A minute or two later he stopped in his prowling by her chair.
“What on earth can they be doing? It can’t have taken them all this time to bathe. They ought to be back. I always distrust those hairpin bends on that road.”
“Miranda knows the road so well.”
“That’s when she might get careless. I don’t know why she had to take Ludo with her at all. Afraid of being alone with her own daughter, perhaps. I’m tempted to take order with that dire child. Why don’t you?”
“Because she’s not my pupil nor my niece.”
“Lucky for you. Do you suppose they really have gone to the pool?”
“I expect they’re just lying about there in the shade. Or Miranda may have taken them for a drive afterwards.”
“Driving on those hill roads means fifty yards and then a sharp corner. And when you get down to the main road it’s just a case of risking your life among a lot of Italian lunatics trying to break their speedometers.”
“There’s a car coming up the hill now.”
There was but it proved to be Dennis back from the pool in the slightly exalted mood of someone who has bathed when other people haven’t.
“Hulloa! What have you been doing? Just sitting about here? Haven’t they brought the drinks out yet?”
“Our hostess is not yet back.”
“That doesn’t matter. She wouldn’t want us to sit here with our tongues hanging out. Enrico! Per favore, please bicchieri. Drinks!”
Enrico with a resentful glance at Dennis, who seemed to him to be taking too much on himself, brought the tray, and put it down on the table with a smack that sent a bottle of campari skidding towards the edge, and set all the glasses ringing.
“Flora, what’s yours? Croft?”
“I don’t want anything at the moment, thank you, I’ll wait until they get back.”
“You can have another one then. Do stop walking about and sit down, you’re making me hot.”
“Be hot then, damn you. If you don’t care what’s happened to the woman who was once your wife I suppose you may care about your daughter.”
“I don’t suppose anything has happened either to my ex-wife or my daughter. You’re not suggesting that Dulcie is the kind of sweet little girl who dies young?”
“I suppose you know that they set out for the pool at three o’clock?”
“Well they weren’t drowned in it. I should have seen their bodies.”
“Ludo went with them.”
“Oh, I see.”
“And when you think how many accidents there are on these Italian roads.”
“There’s hardly any traffic on the road to the next valley.”
“But they aren’t on the road to the next valley. You’ve just come back that way yourself.”
“Look here, Martin, if you’re so worried about them why don’t you take your car and look for them? Then Flora and I can have our drinks in peace.”
“That’s all you care about, I suppose.”
“At the moment yes, it is. I don’t see any need to concern myself about anything else.”
“What you don’t see would fill a library.”
“You’re bloody rude, aren’t you.”
Agatina came out of the window.
“Somebody on the telephone wants the Signora.”
“Tell them she’s out. Say we’re all out.”
“’E Inglese.”
Agatina was clearly not going to accept responsibility for a caller who belonged to that country.
“Oh all right, all right.”
Martin went indoors.
“That’s better.” Dennis went to the tray and refilled his glass.
Martin emerged from the salone, scowling.
“It was that unspeakable woman.”
“Which unspeakable woman?”
“Pauline.”
“Don’t tell me she’s arriving today.”
“No she isn’t; she doesn’t seem to know when she’s coming, if at all.”
“That’s better. Things are looking up. And there’s the car.”
This time it was Miranda. She and Dulcie and Ludo tumbled out with an armful of wet towels and a basket of cherries.
“We’ve been to San Gimignano to have tea and ices in the hotel and show Ludo the towers.”
“Why the hell couldn’t you leave a message to sa
y you were going there?”
“Because we didn’t know. I only thought of it when we had finished bathing. Dear Martin, do I have to ask your permission to take my guests out to tea?”
“I was going to take Ludo to San Gimignano tomorrow.”
“It will still be there.” Miranda turned her back on him.
“Flora, darling, did you have a nice day in Florence? What did you do?”
They told her though Flora had the impression that she was thinking about something else. Almost before they had finished she asked:
“By the way has there been a telegram or telephone message for me?”
“Oh yes,” Martin replied with obvious satisfaction.
“There has. Pauline rang from Vallombrosa.”
“Vallombrosa! Then she’ll be here tomorrow.”
“No she won’t. She’s changed her plans. She doesn’t know when she’s coming.”
“What is she doing at Vallombrosa?”
“I didn’t ask her.”
“But who is she with? Did she say?”
“No. She simply said you were not to expect her, anyhow at present; she didn’t know when she would come.”
“I see.” Miranda dropped into a chair, and pushed the bright hair back from her temples with both hands.
“God, it was hot at San Gimignano! And there was so much traffic on the road home! I’ve got a terrible headache. Somebody give me a drink for heaven’s sake.”
“Dulcie! Now that’s something like.”
Dulcie smiled languidly at her father, and turned slowly round in front of them all. She was dressed for dinner in a long white cotton frock sprigged with small red flowers. She had brushed her sheet of dark hair and tied it on top of her head with a red velvet bow. She had applied mascara lavishly to her eye lashes and had put a quantity of blue shadow round her eyes. It became apparent to them all that she was going to be a beauty, not with Miranda’s flowering loveliness, but with Martin’s clear-cut distinction.
She turned and twirled her skirts in front of them all, but it was when Ludo cried out, “Oh, what a pretty dress. You do look sweet,” that colour flushed into her face and she suddenly became self-conscious. She flopped into her chair with a schoolgirl movement, and said with an exact imitation of her mother’s manner,
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