Coffee cups were on the table; the smoke from Pauline’s cigarette floated lazily between them as they leaned towards one another. Miranda’s brown arm was stretched across the white cloth. Flora saw the gleam of the bracelet loaded with gold charms that she always wore. Pauline was playing with the charms, caressing the arm. She lifted her glass which was still full of red wine, drank a little and then held it out to Miranda, who sipped from it. They might have been alone in a private place.
A good many things became clear to Flora. Her feeling nearest the surface was a dread of their seeing her. She got up quickly, pushed a note into the waiter’s hand to pay for her drink, disregarded, without hearing them, his protests that the table would be free for her now in less than a minute and hurried out into the street.
For the drive home Miranda put Flora into the front seat next to Pauline, saying that she herself was tired out and wanted to sleep all the way back.
“We had a very frustrating day. The Contessa was late and we had to wait ages for our lunch before she came. Then as soon as she found out we wanted the silk, which was rolled up probably getting damp in an empty house, it became her most precious possession. That’s all in the game, I know, and one wouldn’t expect anything else, but she did haggle over the very last lira, didn’t she Pauline?”
Pauline did not answer. Miranda gave Flora a quick nervous look.
“What did you do? I’m afraid you had a long day hanging about. You look very tired.”
“It’s the heat,” Flora said without interest.
She felt like throwing the soft parcel of silk out of the car. I shall give it to Isobel. She couldn’t see Isobel wearing it. I shall have it myself. But if she had the most beautiful dress in the world who was there to see it?
When they arrived at Le Rondini they found that Enrico’s niece, with an obstreperous child of four and a crying baby had come to stay. Ofelia had seen her husband out with another woman; she had snatched up her children and left him. Neither Agatina nor Miranda could deny her clear right to her uncle’s hospitality; in trouble one must fall back on one’s family. Both Miranda and Agatina knew that in a short time Ofelia’s husband would come and fetch her back, or she would go to him. Meanwhile Miranda accepted the inevitable more gracefully than Agatina, who was at closer quarters to it; she muttered and grumbled as she made the bed in the guarda-roba again and beat up the pillows with unnecessary violence.
“She is a stupida that Ofelia. It is not necessary to rush away from your home and drag young children with you, it is possible to make a husband understand his duty without causing so much inconvenience to everyone.”
From the kitchen came the sound of mother and baby crying. Enrico could be heard soothing both with much tenderness. The four-year-old Gian Franco was turning somersaults on the loggia. He paused upside down to stare at Miranda and her two guests as if they were intruders. Then sitting plump on the tiled floor he opened his mouth and howled.
“We’d better go and have leisurely baths and keep out of the way, shall we?” Miranda suggested. “We’ll come down for drinks when calm has been restored. Flora, there’s a letter for you. Don’t hurry, have an hour’s sleep if you like. We shall be lucky if we get dinner before ten.”
In her room, thankful to be alone again, Flora threw off her dress, splashed her face and wrists with cold water and threw herself onto her bed.
Why on earth couldn’t they have said at the beginning that they wanted to go to Florence for a day on business, and left me here? I should have been quite all right alone. Perhaps they even made up the Contessa. No, that’s fantastic. She probably didn’t turn up till after lunch, or they finished their business with her before lunch so they didn’t see any need to invite her. Pauline wouldn’t see any need if she’d already got what she wanted from her. Pauline always meant to get rid of me for the day: but it was Miranda who lied to me.
She realized that she had not opened her letter and retrieved it from the floor where she had let it fall. She did not know the handwriting. She slit the envelope, turned to the signature and saw, “Walter”. How odd when you come to think of it, I suppose he’s never written to me before.
Flat 17, Walsingham Court,
London S.W.I
August 5th, 1971
My dear Flora,
Many thanks for your letter. No apologies necessary. I was disappointed, of course, that you didn’t turn up to lunch with me. I waited at Charing Cross for another train, and then telephoned to Greystones. Isobel told me that you had gone off to your cottage near Oxford to be alone and that she wished you hadn’t, she thought you were depressed and it wouldn’t be good for you. She gave me the address of the cottage. At risk of being intrusive Tom and I set off the next Sunday to look you up. We found the cottage, but of course empty and shut. You have certainly discovered a retreat from the world there. Tom was delighted with it, just the kind of place where he would like to live.
I got your Italian address from Guy. I was so glad to hear that you were enjoying good weather and good company. I haven’t been back to that part of Italy since I was in the Army, and we were driving the Germans northward up the country in ’44. I remember that we went into Florence the day after they left. Looking at the city I’d always wanted to see, it seemed at first sight to be all rubble and blown buildings and ruins, and I thought it would never recover. But evidently it has now survived the Flood as well as the Fire. I hope to see it again someday.
You would be very pleased to hear about Isobel’s son. She seems to be well and happy. Perhaps you will be back for the christening. Isobel and Guy asked Tom to be godfather, but he has scruples about committing a child to a faith that he may not want to adhere to.
When you do come don’t forget that my invitation to lunch still stands. Anytime when you are in London or passing through.
Yours ever,
WALTER
Sounds from below suggested that Enrico’s visitors were taking their time to settle. The telephone rang and since the windows of the salone were now open to the cool evening Enrico could be heard pouring out a torrent of abuse, then Ofelia protesting and crying. Flora, lying in her bath, felt steadied by Walter’s letter, breaking in on what seemed to have shrunk to a small female world. Somebody, was it Aldous Huxley, had said that life was never closed so long as you went down any avenues that were open to you.
Where was Lalage? Evidently not at the cottage. Having useful dull holidays with the ageing aunt who had partly brought her up? Was it too soon to suggest to Nan that she should try to get the best of her poems published in the few periodicals that still published them? Flora had often thought about it during the last year but had held back because nearly every poem had some imperfection, which Nan was finding her way towards improving. But a little recognition now might be a stimulus before her final Schools. Flora got out of the bath, put on her striped violet and white housecoat and went downstairs and out onto the loggia where anyhow drinks had arrived. Ofelia had perhaps taken the first steps towards recovery, for she brought out the bowl of ice cubes, and smiled at Flora as she set it down on the tray although her face was still swollen and moist with so much crying.
Miranda and Pauline were in the garden strolling down the path from the wood. As they came to the bottom of the steps Flora heard Pauline say,
“Up to you. It’s your choice.”
Miranda made a despairing gesture as if whatever choice Pauline was talking about was too difficult for her.
Pauline went in; Miranda poured out a drink for Flora and brought it to her.
“Here you are, darling.” She touched Flora’s arm caressingly.
“I’m so glad you’re here. You’re never cross with me, are you?”
Flora laughed,
“You haven’t done anything to make me cross yet. I might be if you did.”
“Would you forgive me afterwards?”
“How can I tell until it happens?”
Gian Franco suddenly exploded from the
kitchen and scampered along the loggia, shouting with glee and waving a big soup ladle. His mother pursued him, caught him up in her arms and began to carry him back. She stopped by Miranda’s chair, smiling broadly.
“He is a borboni, Signora, a rascal, a very bad boy. Unfortunately he resembles his father.” She kissed the top of the child’s round dark head. “Come, Gian Franco, we must take the ladle back to your uncle or how can he serve the soup? It smells good, it will be for everybody, for you if you are a good boy.”
She swept the child into the kitchen.
Pauline came down, poured herself out a tumbler of neat gin, and began to take charge of the evening. Miranda seemed to recover her spirits, and Flora enjoyed as she always did Pauline’s vivid talk, and the further glimpse of their world, which she was beginning to know from their exchanges as if it was a novel she was reading.
Sounds from the kitchen made it clear that another party was going on there, Enrico, Agatina, Ofelia, Gian Franco, all talking at once and laughing. The noise from the bar in the village below, its blaring music muted by distance, made Flora feel as if she was having dinner near a fair ground. Everybody that evening was enjoying themselves, the cares and griefs of the day laid aside.
When the mosquitoes became active Agatina, shouting abuse at them, slammed the kitchen door, and pulled the wire nets across the windows. She always did this a little too late so that the evening advance guard of insects had already penetrated the house. Flora, Miranda and Pauline, driven in by them, went upstairs to bed; the house was now quiet except once for the sound of the baby crying; the cars departed noisily from the bar; there was no more traffic on the side roads. The villa and the valley settled down for the night.
A familiar morning sound, a light step on the balcony outside her window, the rustle of skirts woke Flora. She raised her head from her pillow, and smiled with pleasure that Miranda was coming again to say good morning to her. She had not brought her cup of coffee. She was twisting one hand uncomfortably in the sash of her housecoat.
“May I come in?”
“Of course.”
Miranda moved to the window and stood with her back to the bed.
“I really do think this is the nicest bedroom. I don’t know why I don’t have it for myself when there isn’t anybody here. You can see the campanile of the church while you’re having your coffee, can’t you?”
“Yes. And all that sloping olive wood at the back, and that other villa with the tower. It’s almost as good as my valley.”
Miranda did not answer for a minute. Then she turned round and said nervously, “Your coffee isn’t cold is it? Pauline had to send hers down. They’re naturally a bit disorganised in the kitchen.”
“No, mine is perfectly all right, thanks.”
“Oh I’m glad.” Flora had the impression that Miranda hardly knew what she was talking about. She swung round from the window and showed a stricken face.
“Flora …”
“Yes?”
“I’ve got to do something I absolutely hate doing.”
“Must you do it?”
“Yes, I suppose I must. It’s something I have to say to you, really.”
“Well?” Flora smiled. “Come on. It can’t be anything so very dreadful.”
“Pauline has changed her plans. She wants to go off down South to Amalfi and along the coast there. She’s very restless, you know. She’s not really keen on this place … She can’t seem to settle down here.”
Flora’s first impulse of joy at the immediate prospect of being alone with Miranda again was checked by a sense that this was not all.
“She wants me to go with her.”
“I see.” Flora did see. After an instant’s pause she said what she knew as she said it to be a mistake:
“Shall I stay here, then, till you come back again?”
“I do wish you could but I don’t think it will be possible. You see, Enrico wants to take his niece and the children back to her husband. There’s been a lot of early morning telephoning. I don’t know if you heard it. And I promised Agatina she should have a few days’ holiday soon, so she’s set on going too. I’m most awfully sorry, Flora, but I’m afraid it means your going home.”
“Of course. As soon as I can get onto a plane.”
“Don’t look like that, please, Flora, don’t.”
“I will get up now and telephone to Florence, and book a seat on the first plane I can get onto.”
“No darling, you needn’t worry about that. It’s all been seen to. We were so sorry about the change in our plans, we didn’t want you to have any trouble we could help. Pauline rang up for you. You know those travel places open at eight o’clock in the summer. Pauline got you a seat on the plane from Pisa this afternoon.”
Part IV
The Thoresby Gardens Hotel was tucked away in a quiet back street between the British Museum and Euston. Flora and Lalage, coming up to London at short notice for a theatre party, had once stayed the night there: they had never thought of staying there again, and there seemed no particular reason why the address should have drifted up to the surface of Flora’s mind when the bus from Heathrow deposited her at the Air Terminal, and she had to tell her taxi somewhere to go. She felt numb, as though getting herself from Florence to London, easy as that was, had used up all the sense and energy she had left. Any place would do where she could put up for a night and decide on her next move.
This afternoon, a fortnight later, she was still at the Thoresby Gardens, and no nearer to any decision. She did not like the hotel but she had become incapable of leaving it. When she was a little girl, just learning to ride a bicycle, Humphrey and Isobel had compelled her to ride with them to a village three miles away. This meant negotiating a level crossing: if the gates were shut for an expected train, her two elders either dismounted or wheeled negligently about on the road. Flora, whose legs were still short and plump, found it very difficult to mount the cycle again once she was off it, and to weave about on the road with the easy skill of the other two was beyond her. All she could do was to stay in her saddle and hold onto a low branch of a tree, but when the train had come through she found it almost impossible to let go of the branch without falling off. The Thoresby Gardens had become her branch. She did not like it but it had acquired a thin patina of familiarity. She felt afraid that if she left it she would fall through her known world into some dark pothole. She went out and walked about the streets every morning and every afternoon but she never turned a corner without looking back to fix in her mind some building, some shop or advertisement hoarding that would serve as a signpost if she forgot the way back to the hotel.
All the same she felt an increasing distaste for the place. It was as clean as the average of its kind, but it seemed to her very dirty: the food was commonplace, but she shrank from it as if it was poisoned; she could not eat more than a mouthful of it: when she went out she bought sweets or a bar of chocolate and sucked or nibbled in her bedroom, always on the edge of nausea. She could not sleep for more than a fitful hour at a time in the bed whose sheets were clean, but which had several stains on the coverlet.
She was growing steadily weaker. She knew it in a detached way as she vaguely noticed her white face and the dark rings round her eyes in her looking-glass. She was aware that she could not go on much longer, but she could not rouse herself to make any move to end it. Her preoccupation with what had happened siphoned off her energy from what could happen; she knew instinctively that she would have to be in somebody else’s hands, and was distinctly aware that she was moving towards a collapse that would hand over the decision.
At this time it was Miranda who occupied the foreground in her mind obscuring Hugh. The more superficial wound was open and suppurating with anger which spread so that she thought she hated everyone from her father and mother, to whom she did not want to go, to the girl at the reception desk at the Thoresby, who was always fiddling with her hair or buffing her nails, and looked up at any request from a c
lient as an unjustifiable interruption.
One of the things that choked Flora’s mind was that she had not told Pauline or Miranda what she thought of them. She could have made anyhow Miranda exquisitely uncomfortable; she could have had a few minutes of splendid satisfaction, but right up to the moment when the car came to take her to Florence she had maintained what she meant at the time to be a dignified reserve, but which now appeared to her as cowardice. In the sleepless hours of the night she rehearsed things that she wished she had said; she was growing past the power of making connections, but it did once occur to her as ironic that she was troubled because she had not quarrelled with Miranda, and had been so much troubled for weeks because she had quarrelled with Hugh. I’ve made a mess of everything, was her inevitable conclusion.
As her strength was reduced by want of food and sleep, her twice-daily walks grew shorter. This frightened and depressed her as if something was closing in on her. She never spoke except when absolutely necessary to the chambermaids and waiters at the hotel, who were of mixed nationalities and had little English. Flora was becoming used to her isolation, so that it came as a shock when she drifted in one afternoon from the dusty, petrol-smelling August streets, and the girl in the reception desk put down the small enamelled hand mirror in which she was examining her eye-shadow to say languidly, “There’s a lady to see you. She’s waiting in the lounge.”
Could it be Miranda? Come to apologize, and make friends again? The swift fantasy restored some energy to Flora’s limbs. She walked quickly round a pillar, then checked frowning with disappointment and irritation. She recognized Isobel, sitting in a big arm chair by the window. Isobel was still wearing the long dark-blue smock that had been the mainstay of her maternity wardrobe, but now it hung loosely on her, and she held a small baby asleep in her arms. She looked up, smiled, rose, put the baby over one shoulder with an easy practised movement, threw her free arm round Flora’s neck and kissed her.
“Here you are. I hoped you’d come in soon. I had to bring Henry. I can’t leave him yet. Besides I thought you would want to see him.”
Snow and Roses Page 17