Silvana, walking ahead of them down the long corridors, threw open the doors of the upstairs rooms. The bedrooms had been furnished with less heavy grandeur than the rooms downstairs, and because they were lighter in style and less crowded Flora liked them better. Silvana was especially proud of the signora’s bedroom, which contained more mirrors than Flora had ever seen in one room. She asked Silvana if the Signora Orbini was very beautiful.
“Si, si,” Silvana nodded and smiled. “Bella, bellissima.”
But her tone was perfunctory. Her admiring eyes were on Miranda as she moved about the room, her brown face and arms, her gleaming curls, her white shirt and scarlet cotton trousers reflected from one end to another in the mirrors.
“You could give a dance in here.”
Miranda put her arm round Flora’s waist; they waltzed on the polished floor between half a dozen reflections of their dancing selves. Silvana smiled broadly, pleased to see so much colour and gaiety as if a flower had suddenly opened in the shut-up house.
“I suppose the others must be raring to go home. But I do want to take you up the tower. It’s a clear evening; we should see San Gimignano.”
She pushed open one of the windows in the corridor and leaned out. In the courtyard below her four guests were grouped round the fountain. Dulcie had climbed onto the back of the dolphin, and laid her cheek on its head. Her long hair dripped like water towards the dry bed of the pool. Dennis appeared to be urging her to come down. Ludo was sitting on the stone rim of the pool, while Martin, stooping over him, was holding his lighter to the boy’s cigarette.
“Ahoy there!”
They all looked up.
“Aren’t you coming down, Miranda? We’ve had enough of this place. We want to go home.”
“Go on then all of you in Martin’s car. I want to show Flora the view from the tower. We’ll come after you.”
“All right. We’ll see you later.”
At one end of the corridor a narrow door, which Dulcie and Ludo had not bothered to shut, gave onto a stone staircase. Miranda led the way up the narrow steps that wound round until they opened onto a tiled floor spotted with bird droppings. There was no roof and the arched windows had no glass in them; the place was open to sun and rain.
“Look, look from this side. You can see there’s San Gimignano—a bit hazy but you can see the towers.”
“And the valley. Lovely, lovely place.”
“It’s our place, isn’t it, this valley? I came here so little before this summer. I only really began to use the pool when you arrived.”
“Yes, it’s our place. There go the others just turning the last bend to the top of the hill.”
“So we’ve got it to ourselves.”
“Except for Silvana and Roberto.”
“Oh, they’re part of it. Let’s stay the night here, Flora? Sleep in one of the bedrooms? Which shall we choose?”
“The pink one with the dark green painted furniture and the striped curtains.”
“All right. We can really, you know. If I give Silvana a few thousand lire she’ll let us have some of their food. We can have dinner in the courtyard, and then come up here and see the valley by moonlight. Shall we? Enrico and Agatina would look after the others at the Rondini. Would you like to stay—”
Flora was surprised by the hard beating of her heart as she answered, “Yes, I would. If we really can.”
“Why not? If I want to do anything I generally do it. We’ll soon fix it up with Silvana to put sheets on the beds. She knows I’m a friend of the Orbini, she’ll be delighted to have any company here. I’ll ring the Rondini a bit later on when Dennis and Martin are mellowed by their drinks, and won’t care if we’re not there so long as they get their dinner. Come along down and we’ll find Silvana. What is it?”
“I was just looking at a car coming towards the gates.”
“Don’t tell me Martin or Dennis is coming back for us.”
“No, it’s not Martin’s car.”
“Someone to see Roberto about the taxes or the electric light bill, I expect.”
They ran downstairs and came out by a side door into the courtyard. The sun had now left all of it but one slanting oblong just inside the main entrance. The fountain was in shade.
“I suppose Silvana is shutting up the rooms again.” Miranda lifted up her voice, and the walls echoed her.
“Silvana! Where are you, Silvana?”
There were footsteps on the gravel outside the big doors. Someone came in through the archway, and stepped into the full sunlight. Flora saw, not Silvana, but a stranger, a slender woman of medium height, who wore dark trousers, a grey shirt, and a broad leather belt studded with steel. Her hair was cut close to her head, and large sunglasses hid most of her face. She checked, peering from the sunlight into the shade.
There was a joyful cry from Miranda.
“Pauline!”
She ran forward to meet her.
Flora woke early next morning from a short restless sleep. There was a beginning of light in the room; she was puzzled at first because she did not see round her the shapes that had grown familiar; the walls were closer to her, the window was on the right instead of on the left. Then she remembered: she was in the bedroom at the back of the house where Ludo had been sleeping; Ludo was on a makeshift bed in the guarda-roba. Pauline was in what had been Flora’s room, the room next to Miranda’s.
Hoping to go to sleep again Flora turned over and shut her eyes. Sentences that might have been part of a dream drifted across her drowsy brain. Miranda apologetic. “You won’t mind, Flora darling? You see Pauline always has slept in that room, she calls it hers; I’ll give you Martin’s tomorrow when he goes.”
Martin, sharp-edged: “I fail to see, Miranda, why two people have got to move because one of your guests did not have the courtesy to announce her arrival beforehand.”
“It’s only for one night Martin. You’re going tomorrow.”
“Yes, we most certainly are.”
“You wouldn’t expect me to put Flora in the guarda-roba, would you, no dressing table there or anything? Young men can sleep anywhere. When people gave dances in private houses the young men used to sleep on sofa cushions in the passage.”
“I daresay they did. I can’t remember that we ever gave a private dance in our house, and I can’t imagine what my father would have said if he stumbled over young louts on sofa cushions every time he came out of his room.”
“Oh, don’t be so stuffy, Martin. What does it matter for one night? Flora doesn’t mind changing, so why should Ludo?”
“Flora does mind, though she’s too well mannered to say so. She hasn’t yet learned how to use her claws in your setup. Why can’t Pauline sleep in the guarda-roba?”
“She isn’t going to. You can have Ludo’s bed moved into your room if you like.”
“You know perfectly well that sharing a bedroom with anybody is something that I won’t tolerate.”
During this exchange Pauline had been strolling through the garden towards the wood. She was wearing a white trouser suit; her figure, somehow never ghostly, appeared and disappeared among the trees. She had gone away leaving Miranda to fight this mini-battle for her; she came back to accept the victory with the calm certainty of someone who had never expected anything else. While Agatina and Enrico could be heard within voicing protests and arguing as they moved armfuls of bedclothes and rearranged furniture, Pauline entertained the company on the loggia with amusing stories of her journey, and gossip about the clientele of the boutique.
Flora saw with surprise that Martin listened avidly to these. He appeared to know most of Pauline’s customers, some he had evidently introduced to her. Angry though he had been a few minutes before about the bedrooms he could not resist gossip. As he leaned forward, his fine, sharp profile turned towards Pauline, Flora realized for the first time how feminine he was. No wonder Lalage, when she wanted to please him, fed him with details of her friends’ private lives. Martin was so eng
rossed by Pauline’s talk, in which spite was half veiled by an assumption of amused tolerance, that he was not even taking any notice of Ludo, who looked sleepy and pale after drinking a good deal of wine at dinner and went yawning into the salone when Dulcie called him to come and put discs on the record player.
After a few minutes Pauline called out, “Turn that thing down, Dulcie. We can’t hear ourselves speak.”
Dulcie came to the window.
“Nobody is speaking except you.”
Miranda said with unusual sharpness, “Dulcie, that’s very rude.”
Dennis, more perfunctory, added,
“Better turn it down a bit, darling … or shut the window.” As she went in again he murmured, “I thought it was making rather a pleasant background.”
Dulcie went inside leaving the window open, and turned up the record player. Flora swallowed a laugh. Pauline lay back in her chair, drew deeply on her cigarette and sent up a cloud of smoke rings. Then with what seemed like one continuous movement she got out of her chair and went inside. The music stopped; there was a shriek from Dulcie. “You bitch! You’ve scratched it. That’s my best record of the Jomblies, and I can’t get it out here. I hate you! I hate you! “
There was the sound of a slap, a cry, hurried footsteps, and the slamming of a door. Pauline, unruffled, came out into the loggia and subsided onto her chair.
“Do tell me,” Martin leaned forward. “Did she slap you or did you slap her?”
“I slapped her, naturally.”
“Either would have been natural under the circumstances.”
Ludo came out of the long window looking frightened.
“Where’s Dulcie?” her father asked sharply.
“I think she’s gone up to bed.”
Dennis rose. “Good night, Miranda. Good night, Flora.”
“You’re not going to bed too, are you? At this hour?”
“I’m going to say good night to Dulcie, and then I shall write a letter or two in my room. It’s certainly time that Dulcie and I went home. Good night.”
As the party broke up at the end of the evening, Pauline spoke directly to Flora for the first time since Miranda had introduced them in the courtyard of the Villa Orbini.
“Miranda tells me you’re writing a book.”
“Yes, I suppose I am. Yes, I am. I haven’t done anything to it lately.”
“You’ve been put off it by trouble, Miranda told me. But you’ll get back to it, I can see you’re not the sort to give up. I hope you’ll tell me about it tomorrow when we shall have time for some rational conversation.”
Flora had gone off to bed unaccountably pleased.
Unable to sleep again Flora rang for her coffee early; there was no one about when she came down. She went out onto the loggia and stood there enjoying the early freshness of the day. She was about to start for a stroll in the wood, when Martin hurried out of the window behind her as if the house was on fire.
“Good morning. Ludo’s ill.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. What’s the matter?”
“God knows. He’s been very sick and had diarrhoea. He’s got a pain in his stomach, and a temperature.”
“Is it a high temperature?”
“It’s just over a hundred.”
“That’s not very high.”
“Any temperature means something. It could be appendicitis … or typhoid … or glandular fever or anything. Miranda has rung the doctor, but the damned fool is out on his rounds already. I’m going to find him. Ludo’s feeling ghastly, and there he is in that uncomfortable room, enough to upset anybody.”
Flora could not feel that a night in the guarda-roba had given Ludo appendicitis or glandular fever.
“Don’t you think it’s just a bit of hot weather tummy trouble?”
“I don’t know. His face is pale and he’s sweating. I must get off.”
“Can I do anything for Ludo while you’re away?”
“You might look in on him just to reassure him and see if he wants anything. And for God’s sake see that fool Enrico doesn’t give him any kind of injection, without even knowing what’s the matter. He wants to do it. He says he knows how; they all know how in this country. I wonder they don’t kill one another more often. I must go.”
Flora heard his car going down the road through the village at breakneck speed.
She reckoned that her visit to the invalid could wait until after her morning stroll, but before she was half way down the steps from the loggia Miranda came out of the window and called to her. Miranda was still in her rose-coloured cotton housecoat, and carried a hair brush which she was absently moving in long sweeps over the bright curls of her hair.
“Flora darling, did you sleep all right? I do hope you were comfortable in that room. It’s cooler, really, on that side of the house. Did you see Martin? What a fuss! He’s now going to spend the morning chasing that unfortunate doctor from one case to another.”
“How is Ludo really?”
“He’s just got a tummy upset. I’ve given him some kaolin and I think he’s going to sleep. It’s a nuisance for Martin that they can’t start today, but it doesn’t really matter. They haven’t booked hotel rooms, they were going to get in where they could in Trieste, so it will do just as well if they go tomorrow or the day after. What are you doing?”
“I was just going for a stroll in the wood.”
Miranda tossed the hair brush into a chair.
“I’ll come with you. I’ll have my bath afterwards.”
At this offer of her company Flora’s spirits rose. They walked arm in arm up the path between the oleander bushes to the fringe of the wood.
“Dennis and Dulcie are going on Saturday. We shall have a little peace then, just the three of us by ourselves.”
“Are you sure it’s convenient for me to stay on, Miranda?”
“But of course. You promised to stay and come back with me in September. Pauline won’t be here for more than a few days, she has to get back to the boutique. I’ve got nobody else coming this summer at all. I get bored and melancholy if I’m alone here for long. I shall adore to have your company.”
She added, “I do hope you’re going to like Pauline. She’s taken a tremendous shine to you.”
It was always pleasant to hear that said whether you believed it or not.
“I’m sure I shall like her. She was very amusing last night.”
“She’s a good talker, isn’t she, very entertaining. Even Martin has to admit that. I do wish he liked her.”
But Martin, I begin to see, never will like anyone who is close to Miranda.
“Well, you don’t like Ludo much, do you?”
Miranda dropped her arm.
“Hardly the same thing. It irritates me that Martin wastes his time and affection on a boy who has no personality. It never lasts either. He’ll be through with Ludo in a couple of years. You’ll see.”
“What will Ludo do then: go back to the shop, I suppose?”
“The best place for him.”
“But won’t he be discontented after he’s been shown something of a different kind of life?”
“Probably. Oh Flora, you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“That neither Martin nor I ever really feel responsible towards other people.”
“Martin seemed to be feeling responsible towards Ludo this morning.”
“Oh yes, because he’s his obsession at the moment. But he won’t when it’s over.”
They walked on for a minute in silence.
“I must go in to the house, Flora, I promised Martin I’d stay around till he got back. Probably he’ll arrive with a specialist from Florence if he can’t find the dottore. But there’s no reason for you to hang about here too. There’s my car and Pauline’s. You could all go to Siena or over to the pool.”
“We don’t need to take two cars. Martin doesn’t want to bathe. Dulcie will be down in a minute. Why don’t we all go in Miranda�
�s?”
“My dear Dennis I can’t stand being driven … by anybody. You come with me, Flora. Get in. We won’t wait for the others.”
Pauline’s Volvo slid smoothly down the village street.
“I can’t imagine how Miranda stood Dennis for so long.”
“Don’t you think we’re seeing him at a disadvantage here?”
“I’ve never seen him at anything else. He’s just the same anywhere—hopelessly commonplace.”
“He’s kind and amusing. I like him.”
“Only, my dear girl, because you haven’t yet found out what you really do like.”
I have, only not like—love—Hugh—Hugh and Miranda.
“One fumbles about at the beginning because of the mess of insincerity and convention in which people like you and I were brought up. The very young don’t take so long to find their way.”
“Some of them do.”
“You must, of course, see more of them than I do. I don’t like callow company. Girls don’t come to our boutique. Not that plenty of them don’t earn a lot of money nowadays, but it isn’t their thing. They buy a smock off the rail in Kensington High Street, and very often look twice as well dressed as any of our clients. We make good clothes, but some women insist on buying things that don’t suit them, and can’t wear the right ones well, if we do manage to sell them to them. I could kick them out of the place sometimes, all except a few.”
“How did you come to start it?”
“Friend of mine had a legacy. She didn’t know what to do with it, but I did, and we went into this thing together. She’s out of it now. She went to America.”
“And now Miranda designs for you.”
“Yes. She and others. She’s good, on the whole, but she can’t do it when she doesn’t feel like it, and since she’s got enough to live on comfortably she often doesn’t feel like it. Amateurs! She’s not a working woman. You are, I take it.”
“Yes, I certainly am. I should have to be even if I didn’t want to, but I do want to.”
Snow and Roses Page 15