‘Heike was telling me about the man she’s fallen in love with, Diana,’ Caresse said in an informative tone. ‘He sounds like a perfect brute. Absolutely ravishing.’
Diana looked at the girl and raised her eyebrows. ‘Is he here?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘And what’s the problem?’
‘He can be rough with me. And he doesn’t want just one woman.’
‘Well, darling, the second part is no great shakes,’ Diana began. ‘Men are men and frankly, the more you lean into it, women are men too.’
‘But, Diana, it’s sweet that she doesn’t feel that way. It’s quite all right to prefer to be two.’ Caresse leaned back in her large wicker sun chair and closed her eyes.
‘I’m aware of that, Caresse,’ Diana said, sweeping her eyes over her as the recollection of the big black car entering the courtyard of Le Moulin crawled into her head. She’d run up to the sun tower, taking his quick methodical steps, and when she’d got to the top – to her shock – she found him there, wrapped in a big coat and holding a bottle. He continued to stare at the car below in the courtyard, waiting. She went to his side, and though he still did not move she felt her presence accepted and they watched together, the sharp night air keeping them alert. After some time the car door opened and her mother got out, but whatever was inside pulled her back in and her laughter travelled, clear in the still night. She re-emerged and closed the door with a flourish. The car started with a low rumble and set off across the gravel, its lights searching the silent buildings. As it left, her mother was covered by the night, but they both listened to the sound of her heels as she walked crisply towards the bedroom, stopped for a moment (and Diana had known she was gazing up at the moon) then continued inside . . .
Diana turned to Heike with a gentle smile. ‘You just have to decide what you’re comfortable with. Everybody else can go to hell.’ Heike looked down at her bare feet and laughed.
‘But the roughhousing, Heike. That’s no dice. For me, anyway. I ended my last marriage because of it and I stand by that utterly.’
‘Oh but I’ve had some very passionate clashes in my time,’ Caresse said without sitting up. ‘They can be the bitter skin that gives way to a very sweet fruit.’
Diana leaned against a stone table, and shook her head.
‘One thing I will say,’ Caresse spoke, her eyes still closed, ‘is that the man you choose is the man you choose. I have no truck for this sadistic practice of “whipping a man into shape”. You must marry a man because you like him as he is, not with the notion that you can force him into something a little more to your taste.’
‘And the same the other way,’ Diana said. ‘It’s as you are, or dasvidanya.’
‘How did you become so experienced?’ Heike asked, taking a persimmon from the bag Diana offered.
‘I realised early on that being a femme did not immediately equate to being a fatale. It can take a little practice. So I started as soon as I could. And these days, between you and me, time isn’t exactly on my side.’
‘You were funny, the way you’d try and be alluring,’ Caresse said. ‘Leaning against doorways with that little pudding bowl haircut and your scuffed shoes. She tried to imitate me then, I think.’
‘Well, the hair grew and the shoes came off,’ Diana said, scrunching the empty paper bag into a ball.
Caresse seemed not to hear and continued speaking, a smile in her voice.
‘I was always a natural flirt myself. I mean, my nanny was practically in love with me – I simply couldn’t help it.’
Diana was silent. Suddenly she stood, and ignoring Heike’s uncertain gaze, she picked up her bag and walked across the courtyard towards her rooms, closing the door with a slam.
‘A passionate temperament.’ Caresse smiled indulgently at Heike. ‘Now do tell me more about these fascinating larra . . . larra . . .’
‘Larrakitj. Well, they take a dead eucalyptus and . . .’ Heike dragged her eyes away from the closed door and leaned towards Caresse. ‘They wait to find a tree that has already died, been eaten from the inside by termites. What they want is that the trunk remains intact but is internally hollow. This they then paint with a brush made from strands of the passed person’s hair.’
Caresse listened, her eyes moving as though she saw the vast expanse of desert spiked with the dead trees.
‘The patterns are unique to each person’s dreaming. If you look here . . .’ Heike opened a monograph and Caresse inspected an image made of many daubs of paint, and soon she was immersed in the complex patterns of another place. Oh, she must go, she must. How fascinating. She looked closely at the image Heike was explaining. Brilliant marks telling another story entirely. She leaned forward, nodding and smiling.
Rue de Lille, 1925
‘But you’re not a poet. You work in a bank.’
He turned and slapped her hard across her cheek. Diana stared at him.
‘Getting away isn’t always such a clean cut, Rat. You’ll understand that one day.’
‘You mean escaping.’ She refused to touch her stinging cheek. ‘Mother says that we escaped.’
‘Yes, but your mother,’ he held her gloved hand up by its wrist, gripping it tightly, and waved it slowly left and right, ‘brought a little stowaway. She was able to shrug Boston off like a stole. For me it was more like this.’ He pinched the spare suede at the tip of Diana’s fingers. ‘You have to tug it off one finger at a time.’ He smiled down at her and took her now bare hand gently in his. ‘Did I hurt you?’
She shook her head, denying the sting, and tried to smile back.
Roccasinibalda, 1970
Bored of waiting in the corner of the small wood-panelled saloon, Diana came up to where Roberto stood at the bar ordering their drinks.
‘What are we discussing?’ She extended her hand to the two local men standing there, who each shook it with reverence.
‘I’ve changed my mind, Roberto. Voglio un Torito.’
‘Cos’ è un Torito?’ the barman said. The men gathered by the bar listened intently.
‘Una bevanda spagnola. Gin e sherry con un sacco di ghiaccio.’
The old barman nodded and began to open a bottle. ‘Una bevanda con cui vincere le guerre.’
Diana hid her surprise. When she’d last been here there had been a shocked silence at a woman ordering hard liquor. Roberto had had to lecture her on the different attitude rural Italians took to women drinking.
She gave a quick smile to an old man she’d seen a few nights before in an underground room beneath a roadside restaurant. ‘Did you win your lira back?’ she called.
‘No,’ he smiled, revealing missing bottom teeth. ‘But neither did you.’
She laughed and then, seeing Roberto’s quizzical look, said, ‘We met at a combattimento.’
He looked at her quizzically. ‘What kind of fight? Where?’
‘Cock.’ She smiled.
He glanced at the man and scowled. ‘Quello non lo praticano qui.’
‘No, no, certo.’ The old man held up his hands, and turned back towards the barman, whose eyes slid between Diana and Roberto.
As they settled themselves at their table, Roberto shook his head. ‘I’m surprised you engage with such ugly practices.’
‘Oh, I love all those tense underworld faces. It has all the seriousness of the bullfight and some of the excitement.’
‘Hardly fit for a woman.’
‘What a ghastly expression, Roberto,’ Diana said. ‘I find it enlightening. You can tell the training the birds have been through. They’re terribly courageous.’
‘You don’t find it cruel?’
‘I suppose towards the end when the birds are tired and almost blind, going at it like pick-hammers until one finally sinks like a rag on the mat. Rather reminds me of some of the men I’ve known,’ she said, lowering her head to light a cigarette.
Roberto was silent.
‘Anyway, I won my wager in the end.’ As
she sat up a man approached them, his cloth hat folded in his hands. Diana recognised him as one of the gardeners who carried Caresse in her sedan chair up and down the winding walkway of the castle.
‘Signora, my name is Bruno.’ The man spoke so quietly that both Diana and Roberto had to lean forward to hear.
‘Piacere,’ she held her hand out to him. ‘Thank you for the work you do. My mother’s heart is weak . . .’
‘It is truly my honour. I love her very much.’
Diana smiled politely, her thighs tensing below the table. She didn’t feel like having this conversation again. ‘It is my belief,’ the man blushed, ‘that she has saved my life.’
Diana lowered her glass a fraction and looked into his watery eyes. ‘Saved your life?’
‘Sì, signora. I was very sick, it was all through my body, when I was visited by your mother in a dream. A kind of . . . vision.’
‘A vision?’
‘Sì, a vision. She was dressed in white and told me to come to Roccasinibalda and continue the work she is doing here. For the women and for the young. So I did. And I will. Without her, I am nothing. I will honour your mother’s memory for the rest of my life.’
‘How extraordinary,’ she murmured, smiling up at him. ‘I’m very happy for you, to have something to believe in.’
‘Grazie, signora.’ Bruno bent, kissed her hand and left them.
‘Well, what did you make of Bruno?’ Roberto looked amused. Diana shook her head.
‘I think it’s rather sad.’
‘What’s sad, his belief?’
‘No. Like it or not, I too have my beliefs. It’s that he thinks this will last. You and I both know there’s not enough money to manage this place for much longer. Who does he think will continue to pay for this?’
Roberto cocked his head to one side. ‘What are your beliefs, Diana?’
‘I believe in loyalty.’ She took a long drink and waited for her voice to steady itself. ‘And in not being afraid to see things as they are. Now, listen,’ she bit at the skin on the side of her thumb. ‘The thing I want to ask you. It’s a small thing really.’
Roberto waited.
‘I want you to keep the diaries for me. The originals. She’s got a thing about me having them and I couldn’t bear for them to be lost.’ Diana stared hard at him.
Roberto shook his head, avoiding her gaze. ‘Your mother works from printed manuscripts . . .’
‘Roberto, please.’ She put her hand over his. ‘You have influence with her.’ She watched his pride swell at that and had to force her voice to remain soft. ‘She won’t give them to me. But I feel sure she still has them.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes, you do.’ She let him go. ‘And don’t destroy any of her papers without asking me first. You know, when she . . .’ She could not bring herself to say the word. Oh, she hated it when her body betrayed her. Roberto saw it too and, his own eyes glistening, now covered her hand with his.
The bar was now full of talk and drink and Diana sat back and surveyed the crowd. The girls wore lipstick (many the same shade as her mother) and sat at ease among the boys, hands resting freely. A group began to play music and a young boy, slim and tanned in his short-sleeved white shirt, took a girl and they danced close, faces together. A group came in from the castle and the music became more raucous, a girl got up on a table and began to gyrate, her feet blindly gripping the wood. Through rough cigarette smoke, the older men watched impassively from the edges of the room, surreptitiously eyeing the girl’s bare legs as she moved. As Diana drank, she felt a familiar clinch of anger and with every tip of her glass she felt it grow. What had happened here? These people were good country Catholics, what were they doing drinking and making a show like this? Why hadn’t her mother left these simple people alone in their ways?
She looked at a boy’s hand moving inside the neck of a girl’s cotton dress. She was sure that it was one of her mother’s ‘peasant’ dresses. The bodies moved and heaved and she stared at a girl’s face as she laughed and laughed, her face getting redder. She shook her head. These wide-faced country boys and girls shouldn’t be doing this, they should be allowed to keep their morals.
‘Where is Caresse?’ A boy pushed through the crowd and stood in front of Diana, chest heaving.
‘She’s dying.’ She was motionless in her chair.
‘What?’ He squeezed closer so that he could hear.
Diana reached up, placed a hand on the side of his face and pulled his ear close to her lips. She could see the dark hairs fading into his slender neck.
‘She’s lying down.’
He looked at her for a moment, their faces almost touching, and blushed. Then he pushed back through the crowd to his friends.
‘Diana, I think we should go.’ Roberto got to his feet with difficulty, motioning aside the group that had gathered round them.
She stood, but at that moment the two men from the BBC came into the bar. They saw Diana and threaded their way towards her, eyebrows raised in greeting. Diana signalled for more drinks and the men found chairs and sat next to her, so that Roberto was forced to reluctantly follow suit.
‘Well, gentlemen, how was that?’ Diana asked, leaning into the centre of the circle.
‘It went very well.’ They glanced at one another. ‘Your mother’s energy is remarkable.’
Diana smiled tightly. She’d always noticed the very same quality, but this outsider’s observation was not welcome.
‘Yes, she knows how to talk.’ Diana bent her head to light another cigarette. ‘Holds her audience absolutely captive.’ She put her head back and exhaled a plume of smoke, eyebrows raised.
‘You know, we’d love to hear your take on that time,’ the cameraman said. He’d like to film that elusive face. It seemed to change as she moved, shifting from sensuous to sharp and back again.
Diana shrugged. ‘I was a child. It’s rather a blur. Like all the best parties, I suppose.’
But the table was hers now, a round of pricked ears. ‘I’m sure she’s told you all about Paris and Harry, so I won’t go into that . . .’
‘No, actually.’ Martin sat forward. ‘She focused more on the later years, for the most part. The Surrealists and all that emerged after 1930.’
‘Probably for very good reason,’ Roberto said. ‘I’m sure Signora Crosby has said all that she wishes to.’
‘Well, Harry wasn’t someone you can exactly leave out of the story. Harry was Paris.’
‘Diana,’ Roberto warned.
‘To be honest, we were told not to ask about that.’ Martin spread his hands.
‘And my nanny told me not to tell tales.’ Diana smiled at his dull, bearded face. ‘But we do, don’t we?’
‘Well, we tried . . .’
‘Yes,’ Diana sighed. ‘She can be stubborn.’
‘Mrs Crosby has every right to protect her privacy, should she so wish.’
‘Oh, have another drink, Roberto. When we settled in Paris, my mother and Harry were able to begin building the life they wanted.’
‘And what was Harry like, as a man?’ Martin, who prided himself on his ability to carve interviews with the deftest of hands, cut in.
‘What was he like?’ Diana repeated in a faraway voice, then, deciding to let them have it, she stretched her arms across the table and leaned towards the two men; a sinewy cat-like movement. ‘He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. No, scratch that. Have ever seen. There was something in the way he looked at you that made you stop what you were doing. He had a hypnotic light. Unexpected. Unsettling. And he was never banal, never. I don’t think I ever heard him ask anyone a question unless he really wanted to know the answer. Politesse was a dirty idea. Talk was serious. And he liked people for what they were, not what they tried to be, so that you had the feeling of being liked by him in a way you’d never been liked before . . .’ She shook her head suddenly, retreated, her words faltering. ‘It’s not easy to talk about him. He
was more movement and feeling than anything else. There’s so little that can be said that does him justice. You always end up sounding rather banal.’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘Like trying to describe the sea.’
‘I think you sound anything but banal.’ Martin raised his glass of white wine. His flattery was a familiar hand moving up her spine and she leaned in again, biting her lip.
‘He was . . . unencumbered. A combination of blithe freedom, hard athleticism and drink delirium. He soaked his soul in booze and set fire to it every night. The morning was for grey remorse and running until his sweat ran clean. He was methodical, thorough, appreciative of honesty. He didn’t lie. He didn’t hide. He took what he wanted and discarded what bored him. He was only barely constrained by time. Those times. Barely a man and yet older than everyone. Ceremony, his own ceremonies, were sacred and he followed the wild urges of his imagination with strict solemnity. Ritual was everything, routine forbidden. He loved graves, loved to walk among them. And he loved death, that was the true dance really. That’s what interested him. The only worthy opponent. He would do anything and everything that entered his mind. He was . . . electric with rebellion.’
‘ “Electric with rebellion”,’ Martin repeated, smiling at the cameraman.
‘What?’ Diana crossed her arms, looking between them, a little scowl twisting her face.
‘It’s a wonderful expression, that’s all. Your mother used it earlier.’
‘It might be her phrase.’ Diana coated the word with oily disdain. ‘But it was his life.’
Alderney, 1993
Bay was the first to wake.
Through her bedroom window she had seen that the zips remained closed on her brothers’ tent.
She was the absolute first.
‘The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.’ Her mother’s words echoed through the hall of her mind as she walked the dark silent house in her dressing gown, its cord trailing loose, looking at the closed doors.
She pushed open the door to the upstairs sitting room and was bathed in morning light, as rich and yellow as the yolk of her breakfast egg.
The Heart Is a Burial Ground Page 9