‘Well, we are all children yet.’
Diana looked up the table towards where Caresse was leaning into the glow of the candlelight, laughing in surprise at someone’s remark.
‘We should take some guns, go for a walk together,’ Ellis suggested.
She laughed. ‘Are you hiding weapons in the Città della Pace?’
‘With people like you around, I’d be a fool not to.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t use a gun for that. I have other means at my disposal.’ She smiled, broad and unexpected.
He forked some food into his mouth but then paused and frowned.
‘What’s wrong?’ Diana asked, laughing.
‘What is this?’
Diana ate some. ‘Tripe.’
He nodded and wiped his mouth with his napkin. ‘Bad associations, that’s all.’
Diana ate some more. ‘I like this style of cooking. La cucina povera. Scraps from the big table transformed into something even more delicious. I admire it.’
‘Your mother serves a lot of offal.’
‘Were you hoping for lobster?’
He laughed. ‘Ah, little girl, if you only knew what this meat is made of.’ He patted his thick stomach. ‘I’m like a pelican that lives on a dump.’
But Diana was not listening. She’d caught her reflection in the dimly lit mirror hanging on the opposite wall. She moved her head a little . . . to make sure of . . . With a slight inclination of her neck she met herself at her best. There. Those lovely planes and curves, the hollows of her cheeks (she sucked slightly and the shadow deepened), the turn of her brow (the recent tuck had neatened things up beautifully) and the wide, friendly expanse of her mouth. She smiled to herself and relaxed back into the conversation.
‘So, you and the sculpting prodigy?’ Ellis glanced back at David.
Diana’s eyes flicked away. She disliked uninitiated intimacies. ‘Why don’t you tell me about your work.’
‘The words were all right today.’ He bent low over his plate and Diana could hear the food moving inside his mouth. ‘But I’m no prophet.’ He pulled a bit of gristle from his teeth and wiped it on the side of his plate.
She observed him, revolted. ‘I don’t know about all that prophet talk really.’
‘More profit than prophet – J. P. Morgan’s nephew.’ He laughed. ‘No disrespect intended. It’s just that it’s easy to play the artist with goose feathers in your pillow . . .’
Diana dragged her eyes slowly over his plate, face and loaded fork.
‘I’m a leech, I’ll admit that.’ He finished his mouthful. ‘You don’t need to insinuate. Your mother’s got big generous white arms and she opens them to all of us.’
‘It’s not her money paying for this, Mr Porto; that’s been bled dry. It’s Morgan dollars putting the ink in your pen.’
Ellis laughed. ‘I’m a hypocrite, mon lecteur.’ He spread his hands.
‘Everybody gets that line wrong,’ Diana said with a sneer and turned away.
The girl on Ellis’s left leaned across. ‘Will you tell me what you’ve been working on, Mr Porto? I so love your work. When I heard you were here I was so excited. I said to my friend, I said, Ellis Porto!’
‘You were excited, were you?’
‘Yes, I love your poems.’ The girl’s lips were full and soft.
‘What do you love about my poems?’
‘I love their power,’ she said shyly. ‘They aren’t afraid. You say what you think. What’s that unforgettable line . . .?’ She looked up at the ceiling as though it might appear in the vaulted shadows. Ellis stared at her from beneath his eyebrows, but the girl continued, oblivious. ‘You just . . . go for it.’
‘I go for it, do I?’
‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Will you do one for us? Do a poem?’
Ellis looked at her and then, with a glance at Diana, who was talking to the man beside her, stood. ‘Yeah. I’ll do a poem for you.’ He scraped his heavy chair back across the stone floor.
‘A poem,’ he shouted.
Caresse smiled broadly and leaned forward, so that the conversation around her subsided.
Ellis hoisted himself up onto the table, staggered for a moment and then stood bathed in candlelight from the enormous iron chandelier that hung above his head.
‘I’ve been asked to do a poem,’ he announced to the lifted faces. The girl below him clasped her hands in rapture.
‘This doesn’t have a title as yet.’ He turned towards the girl, steadying himself on his feet. His hand unzipped his fly and with one movement he took his penis out of his trousers and began to rub himself, staring straight ahead.
There was silence, nobody moved.
The poet’s shallow breathing got faster as his hand moved up and down, the unmistakable sound filling the cavernous space. One of the girls from the kitchen entered the doorway holding a large bowl, saw what was happening and disappeared back into darkness.
With a final weak movement, Ellis convulsed and grunted before letting go.
The girl before him was very still, a red rash creeping up her neck.
Each of the guests dragged their eyes towards Caresse at the head of the table. She pushed her chair back so that it groaned against the flagstones and stood, before walking with deliberate steps round the table, all eyes following her progress. When she reached Ellis’s empty chair she stopped, and raised her white napkin up towards him.
‘Thank you, Ellis, that was certainly something new.’
Le Moulin du Soleil, 1926
‘What’s your favourite letter, Rat?’
‘Why?’ she asked.
He lowered the shotgun that he was aiming through the bathroom window at a pheasant strutting on the lawn, and laughed.
‘What’s yours?’ she asked, watching the bird’s progress through his field glasses.
He lifted the gun again and squinted down the sight.
‘I, of course.’
Alderney, 1993
‘Are you ready to take it in?’ Her mother held the tray out. Bay mournfully took in the grin of banana, folded napkin and glass of milk. She felt a lump in her throat at the missing little vase that normally held some wild flowers that her mother picked as she walked in the garden saying her prayers. Her father still needed to glue it back together.
‘Come on, darling, take it.’ Her mother held the tray out expectantly.
The door was pushed open, and Bay entered the dark of the bedroom. It was warm inside, the air heavy and sweet, and the body of her grandmother was just visible on the bed. Putting the tray down with shaky hands, she tiptoed lightly to the window and pulled the thin cord of the curtains as though hoisting a sail, so that light entered the room by degrees. She turned back and saw with surprise that her grandmother’s head was invisible, wrapped in layers of material like a mummy. She peered at it, and then reared back when her grandmother sat up, her covered head looking blindly left and right. Thin arms raised themselves in a stretch and then, patting her head as though checking she was actually there, the hands began to slowly unwind the scarf from her head. Beneath it, her grandmother wore a mask over her eyes and between them a large sticker covered her forehead. These were pulled away in quick succession.
‘It’s you. How nice to have a maid again,’ she said and leaned forward. ‘Pillows.’
‘Why are you wrapped up like that?’ Bay asked, as she struggled with the pillows.
‘It’s my vanishing act.’ She blinked a few times. ‘What’s your mother doing?’
‘She’s busy getting us ready for the beach,’ Bay said quietly, not wanting to tell her grandmother that she’d asked to bring in the tray.
‘Busy busy busy.’ Bay did not like the way her grandmother said it. ‘Your mother keeps herself so tightly wound,’ she began to cough, ‘she doesn’t leave her hands free for much else.’ Bay thought that her grandmother’s face seemed crumpled, like her bed, and she wanted her mother to come in and pull it all smooth and tuck the corners tight.
‘The perfect breakfast.’ Diana gazed with satisfaction at the tray. ‘The gallant banana, peeled thus. Perfectly ripe.’ She took a bite. ‘And then,’ her voice was thick with the fruit, ‘the cold milk. Keeps you strong.’ She put the glass down and stared levelly at Bay. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I am?’ There was milk round her mouth.
Bay shook her head and looked down.
‘Well, I feel awful.’
Bay nodded. One of the photos on the bedside table was an old man wearing a long coat, her very young grandmother beside him wearing a stiff white dress. Bay stared at it.
‘What are you staring at?’
With a start, Bay indicated the picture.
‘My first wedding. Look how sweet I was in my Schiaparelli. But I don’t recommend marrying someone your father’s age. No oomph.’
Bay put the picture down and took another.
‘Now that one. That’s more like it.’
‘Who was he?’ Bay asked, sitting half on, half off the bed, her thigh beginning to tremble.
Diana laughed, bitterly. ‘He was my lover,’ she said in a lowering tone. ‘One of the greatest matadors in Spain. Could kill a bull with a single thrust. Best hands of any man I’ve been with.’
Bay stared at her grandmother.
‘And what did he do?’ She’d heard her parents ask that when there were silences.
‘Do?’ Her grandmother stretched the word into a world of possibility. She leaned back and smiled. ‘He made love to me, Bay. Endlessly.’
Elena heard Bay slapping down the stairs, one two three, dragging the tray behind her. She turned away from the cupboard she was filling to look at her daughter. The child was thin, Elena thought. She looked like an old woman with that worried frown and hunched shoulders.
‘Did Grandma like her breakfast?’
Bay nodded and went to the kitchen table. She put the tray down and climbed onto a chair, resting her head in the soft crook of her elbow.
‘What is it, darling?’ Elena asked as she took ham, tomatoes and lettuce from the fridge and laid them on a chopping board in front of Bay.
Bay shook her head.
‘Are you sure?’ Elena pulled a serrated knife from the rack and took a loaf of bread by its neck.
‘Is there . . . something you want to say, Bay?’
‘I . . .’
‘Yes?’ Elena looked at her encouragingly, knife poised.
‘Will I have to have many lovers?’
‘Lovers?’ The knife bit into the soft brown bread.
‘Grandma told me I’ll have too many lovers to know what to do with.’
‘She . . . she shouldn’t have said that, Bay.’ Elena’s voice faltered.
‘What do you do when you’re lovers?’ Bay darted a look at her mother.
‘You . . . love each other,’ Elena said carefully, as her mind scuttled down a darkened channel of thought. She was in her father’s study, listening to him describe the new woman he’d met. ‘She looked rather like this . . .’ and she’d gone closer to look at the magazine he kept in the drawer of his desk.
‘Can you do it in clothes, Mama?’ Bay asked, but looking over she saw that her mother had gone very still. ‘Mama?’
‘You don’t need to think about all that, Bay,’ she said in a high, bright voice, and Bay felt a lurching in her stomach, as though they were walking down the steep cliff path to the beach, having to grip the tufts of grass sprouting from the rocks so as not to slip and fall.
Her mother came and knelt before Bay, her hand still clutching the knife, and now Bay became very still. ‘You don’t need to think about any of that, my love. You must just enjoy your lovely summer holiday. You must just enjoy.’
Bay nodded, once, and Elena slowly got to her feet. Turning back to the table, she took the bread in hand and, with some difficulty, continued cutting.
Rue de Lille, 1925
‘I am unworthy.’ He came in and lay down across her nursery bed.
‘Why?’ She put down her pencil and glanced at Mette, who crossed her arms and pulled her mouth to one side.
‘It is disgusting to be so drunk,’ he said with his face in her pillow. ‘I will go running. I want clean lines and aching fresh lungs.’
‘What happened?’ Diana asked, getting up from her desk.
‘Pisse et fumier. Most of the memories are still unconscious, thank God.’
‘What’s wrong with your wrist?’
‘I fell off a table.’
‘Mette hurt her back trying to lift me out of bed when I wouldn’t get up.’ Diana looked at Mette encouragingly, willing a show of empathy.
‘Come on, Rat, enough of your copy book. You can take the morning off, Mette. I’ll teach the Wretched Rat today.’
‘We have not finished her lesson, monsieur.’
‘Later.’
Mette stood and took down the small jacket from the hook. She helped Diana into it and then knelt to do up its buttons.
‘Diana.’ Mette looked into her eyes. ‘I will wait here for you.’
Diana leaned briefly against the familiar, solid bosom and was held tight.
‘Come on, Wretch. Caresse returns from Deauville today, let’s have a breakfast of raspberries and bacon and eggs in the sunny golden garden of the Ritz. Luxury will purify, we’ll make it our morning prayer for your mother’s safe return.’
Roccasinibalda, 1970
Diana looked at her mother as she slept. Slackened by sleeping pills, chin tucked into chest, she was really rather ugly. She recalled her face in the garden of Le Moulin, then so gentle in sleep, completely abandoned. She’d always done that – slept like a milk-drowned baby – impervious to the loudest sound. Diana could scream at the top of her voice and she would not so much as stir. ‘It’s a skill, Diana, necessary for survival. When you’ve a husband who reads throughout the night with every lamp in the bedroom blazing, there’s no other way to get the rest that beauty needs.’
But it wasn’t just a skill for the bedroom. She had used it everywhere. Yes, her mother had been perfect lying asleep in the garden with a party going on around her, lips stretched into a satisfied smile as though she knew everyone was watching; her body in its yellow dress like a snake in the grass, stretched alongside another man.
She put the tray down. She could never sleep like that. Bed was where her head came alive, thoughts pushing and shoving . . . sweet mercy of Xanax.
Her mother moved slightly. Leaning forward, Diana saw that beneath the marbled lids the eyes were switching back and forth, her joints twitching, probably with the memory of some pleasure . . .
Caresse felt herself pulled upward by the sly clink of ice in a glass.
Her eyes opened onto her daughter holding a tray and she frowned, squeezing her eyes closed, shutting her out, and pushed back through the fading movements of the night, searching. She had been at home on Singing Beach . . . her father down by the shore. Yes, that was it, at the house made of shells, a scalp of seaweed heavy in her hand. But it was passing, she could feel the warm, sweat-soaked pillow beneath her head; and a small grieving sound escaped as she was returned to her body . . . Her eyes opened again on the familiar bedroom and she felt the weight of herself beneath the covers. She grimaced as she tried to sit up, the papers she had been reading crunching around her.
She stared at the iced glass of apricot juice.
‘There’s no need to look like that. I didn’t do it.’ Diana glanced down at the tray and then deposited it on the bed.
‘Well, who did? The girls are hardly prone to pretty gestures.’ Caresse insisted on referring to the grey-haired women from the village who came every day to cook and clean as the girls.
‘It was David’s idea. He was going to bring it up, you asked to see him.’
‘I stayed up late, working.’ These days, Caresse did not like to be caught sleeping. As she moved, the covers released a close smell, all too human, and she pressed them carefully back down, aware of her daughter’s proximity.
‘All the lights were on. The nurse should have turned them off.’ Diana passed her the pills by her bed.
‘I told you she was superfluous. The girls were doing absolutely fine. You can take her back to whichever asylum you found her in.’ Caresse swallowed the pills. ‘We’ve always had terrible luck with our staff, haven’t we?’
‘Roberto found her, actually.’ Diana was not in the mood to play.
‘Oh? Dear Roberto.’
‘Yes, oh dear Roberto. I’ll go and get her.’
‘No, stay.’ Something in her tone made Diana stop. ‘I don’t feel very well. I think yesterday tired me out a little.’
‘Well, avoiding things is tiresome.’
‘Oh, don’t!’ Caresse flapped her hand at her daughter. ‘Don’t start all that again.’
Diana retreated. ‘I thought you would enjoy being interviewed.’
‘Not particularly. They ask dull questions, I give interesting answers . . .’
‘Yes, I’ve spent a bit of time with them,’ Diana agreed. ‘Not the sharpest blades on the rack. They wanted to know about my take on things too,’ she added lightly.
‘You are free to say what you will and do as you wish,’ Caresse said, her voice low. ‘If you’ve come here to look for ghosts, Diana, you’ll find plenty. But I’ll not help you grub about. It’s the young who are important here. They mean something.’ She pressed her hands to the sides of her face. ‘Oh my head, you are hard to wake me up with this.’
‘You are aware, Caresse, that the young grow old?’
‘I don’t like it when you’re sardonic; you sound just like your father. Now, unless there’s something you particularly wanted, I’d like to dress in peace.’
‘You asked to see David. What did you want to talk to him about?’
The Heart Is a Burial Ground Page 11