Summer's Lease

by John Mortimer

  ‘Is that why you let her do it?’

  ‘Of course that’s why. Being let down an Italian well, by a crowd of villagers. I thought, that’s something she’ll remember all her life.’

  ‘Perhaps it will be.’

  ‘But of course she didn’t enjoy it. That’s the trouble with adventures. People start out on them and then they go wrong. A bit like taking this house for instance.’

  ‘What upset her?’

  ‘Was that a lorry?’

  ‘No. What do you suppose upset her?’

  ‘It was cold and dark down there, I imagine. Perhaps she wondered if she’d ever get out.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘What else do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anyway, nothing she wants to talk about.’

  By six o’clock the water hadn’t arrived and Haverford, looking at their despondent faces, said, ‘It’s like a death in the family.’ Being, as he said, temporarily flush, he took them all for a plate of spaghetti in a ‘trat’ in Mondano. In fact he had telegraphed the Informer for some expenses ‘to entertaining priest’, and, bewildered by this unusual demand, the editor had wired back money. ‘This is the little spot where the locals eat,’ he told the family as they took their places under the umbrellas in the small Piazza Emanuele. The locals consisted of the party of Sloanes Molly had seen at Nancy Leadbetter’s and another English family with two teenage sons whom Haverford, loudly and explicitly, urged his eldest granddaughter to ‘get off with’ or ‘drag away to the disco’, although he didn’t suggest where a disco might be found in Mondano. These invitations made Henrietta feel that she would do anything, even return to the well, to avoid the company of the two youths one of whom bore across his chest the legend MY MOTHER WENT TO ISRAEL AND ONLY BROUGHT ME BACK THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT.

  After some confusion over the ordering, Haverford gave them a lengthy account of his love affair with one of a pair of identical twins whom he’d met at a Red Mole party in 1965. ‘And it was only when we were tucked up in her freezing room in Charlotte Street that I got this strange feeling and I said, “But you’re not Janet, are you?” And she gave me the immortal reply, “No, I’m Heather, but won’t I do?” I made a short story of the business and sent it up to Encounter, but the puritanical buggers in charge sent me a rejection slip! Do you find that believable? Even Haverford Downs receives the occasional rejection slip! It was ever thus with genius. Thomas Hardy always included a stamped, addressed envelope with his contributions. Magnificent title that, don’t you think, Hughie — I’m Heather, but Won’t I Do? The whole problem of identity raised in a single sentence. And still the buggers rejected me.’

  Of all the family Jacqueline had received the warmest welcome by the waiter, was always asked what she wanted first, and called Bellissima. Now she was asleep, her fists clenched and her hair half-way into a quarter-eaten plate of spaghetti, so Haverford called for il doloroso and to his daughter’s surprise pulled money out of a back pocket, new ten thousand lire notes. ‘I told you, I’m flush at the moment. Flush and eager to show a little hospitality to the best daughter an old man ever had to comfort his declining years,’ he added with patent insincerity.

  And then, on the way home, something happened which raised their spirits almost to the point of singing. On the dirt road from the castle, headlights blinded them, great tyres crunched to a standstill and Hugh backed on to the bramble bushes. What he made way for was the long cylindrical body of a lorry. A dark giant of a man, possibly Tonio, leaned out of the lorry’s cabin to thank them for pulling out of the way. ‘Acqua?’ ‘Sì, acqua.’ ‘Grazie, grazie tanto.’ ‘Thank God.’ ‘Grazie mille.’ The cries of gratitude sounded from the car and heartfelt from Haverford, ‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.’ Even the child in Molly’s arms smiled sleepily when her sisters told her that the water had come at last.

  As soon as she got into the house, Molly ran up the stone stairs to the kitchen tap before she switched on the light. There was a cough, a splutter in the darkness, but no water. Hugh called from the loo to tell her that pulling the chain produced a cascade of silence. Depressed and disappointed, she went to the square of kitchen window and looked out on to the pool, which glittered in the moonlight, now flowing with the precious and expensive liquid which should have filled their most urgent needs. ‘Oh, Italy!’ she said to herself, on the verge of tears, ‘whatever are you up to now?’

  ‘I don’t suppose you paid the almighty lire, did you?’ Hugh had gone into San Pietro in an effort to find the Daily Telegraph which had disappeared from their lives with Signor Fixit. Giovanna was in the house, banging the washing up unhappily into a bowl of chlorinated water. The rest of the family sat huddled round the pool, rather as rose bushes, shallots and date palms will crowd thirstily round an oasis in the desert. Haverford was writing his ‘Jottings’, young Jacqueline was splashing in her arm-bands while her two older sisters tried to further define the watch marks on their wrists. Molly stood looking at the lapping water with Ken Corduroy, expert on garden pools and pergolas, who had arrived quite unexpectedly in his Volvo estate.

  ‘We couldn’t have paid them. We went out to eat in Mondano and they just dumped all the water in here.’

  ‘Well, there you are, you see. They do like to be paid.’

  ‘But they came at night. Under cover of darkness. They came when we couldn’t possibly have expected them.’

  ‘That’s what they tend to do.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Please don’t ask me to explain what goes on in the mind of an Italian Water Board. It’s been a complete mystery to me ever since I arrived here. It’s like their attitude to religion and their bloody Communist Party. Totally confusing, to say the least. It comes as a shock, I have to tell you, to anyone who’s spent a lifetime dealing with the perfectly decent chaps you run into at Thames Water.’

  ‘I suppose I don’t know exactly what Giovanna told them.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. And you don’t know what their game is exactly.’

  ‘Their game?’

  ‘Might it be, I’m only hazarding a guess, you realize that, but might it be that they want you to get them out here again?’

  ‘Will they come?’

  ‘Who knows? Unless you pay them.’

  ‘What would they do?’

  ‘You mean where would they put the water next time? Maybe on the sitting-room carpet. Your guess is as good as mine, Mrs Pargeter.’

  Molly imagined a dehydrated house turned into a swamp and said hastily, ‘Of course I’d pay them. But they never left a bill.’

  ‘Like their taxi drivers. Haven’t you had that at the end of a journey. “What’s the fare?” “What you like!” With an ever so charming shrug of the shoulders. They trust you to get into a panic and err wildly on the side of generosity.’

  ‘The Water Board would behave like that?’

  ‘Especially the Water Board.’

  Molly fell silent. The sun lulled her brain. Henrietta dived into the pool and her head emerged, neat and glossy as a seal’s. It was too hot to argue. ‘How much,’ she said, ‘do you think would be reasonable?’ He had, after all, some experience of pools.

  ‘Five hundred and thirty grand. In lire.’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty pounds?’ Molly’s mathematics were instantaneous. The Ketterings would have to pay in the end, but it was a sizeable chunk of their holiday money. ‘All right, if that’s what it costs.’

  ‘I should think it costs at least that.’

  “I’ll send it.’

  ‘In the post? How long do you imagine that’s going to take? You’d next clean your teeth back in England. Look, I happen to be calling at the office this afternoon. Pool business.’ He had little difficulty in persuading Mrs Pargeter to run into Mondano with him and cash some traveller’s cheques. When she left the pool side, she said to her father, ‘I’m just popping into the bank with Mr Corduroy.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said Haverford, ‘of course you are
,’ and didn’t look up from his ‘Jottings’.

  So, shortly before noon, Molly trusted Mr Corduroy with her money and at six o’clock when she was in the kitchen opening a packet of cornflakes for Jacqueline’s supper the tap, left on, coughed discreetly and loosed off a generous gush of what looked to her like particularly clean and upmarket water. She gave Jacqueline a hot bath and later, with a feeling of gratitude for some sort of deliverance, she laid dinner out on the terrace. They ate by candlelight, with highlights from Turandot playing, but received no visitors of any sort.

  After dinner Molly, who had taken to reading there in the afternoons, went into the big downstairs sitting-room to find her book. She saw it, a paperback Margery Allingham, on the shadowy sofa and moved towards it. Outside the tall windows the darkness came suddenly, unexpectedly, without any long twilight. Then she felt a breath of air and the creak of the door she hadn’t altogether shut and which led out to the courtyard. The visitor, whoever it was, came in silently, and looking round, not knowing who or what to expect, Molly saw the tall sad-looking dog, its eyes wet and its pink tongue lolling, which Buck had apparently abandoned to the Castello Crocetto. It moved uncertainly towards her, its uncut claws rattling on the tiles, and gave her hand a soft, wet greeting. At that moment the telephone rang.

  She waited for three rings, but she knew that Hugh wouldn’t pick up a machine that might buzz and shout ‘Pronto!’ at him. Then she lifted the receiver while still holding out her other hand for the dog to lick.

  ‘Vittoria Dulcibene,’ the telephone announced. ‘I am missing that horrible dog. Has it gone off to look for Buck?’

  ‘Yes, it’s here.’

  ‘It should be kept chained. My gardener is too soft-hearted. Shall I come and pick it up or will it do in the morning?’

  Molly thought it would do in the morning, and then she said, ‘Was it Mr Kettering who left the dog with you?’

  ‘Well, no. It was Sandra, actually. She dumped Manrico here, with compliments of Buck.’

  ‘I expect you know how to get in touch with her, in case of trouble, I mean. Is she in London?’

  ‘London? I don’t know about London. There or in Rome, perhaps. It’s hard to know where they get to. Why do you ask who left the dog with me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mr Kettering going off without the dog and his wife bringing it round to you — it all seems a bit odd if it’s so devoted to him.’

  ‘People may be devoted to us and we’re not so devoted to them. Haven’t you found that?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then you are lucky, Mrs Pargeter. Shut that appalling Manrico up in a shed somewhere. I’ll send the gardener in the morning.’

  The line went dead and, unfolding itself from the mat, the dog gave a single, peremptory bark that might have been the result of an interrupted dream. The sudden sound brought down the children and Hugh, who looked nervously at the Borzoi.

  ‘What’s that? The Hound of the Baskervilles?’

  ‘I think it’s the Ketterings’ dog. It seems to have come home.’

  ‘Well, we can’t be expected to look after it. Not on top of everything else.’

  However the girls took the dog upstairs where it wolfed all that was left of the lasagne and went to sleep in front of the hearth, quieter than it ever had been at the Castello Crocetto.

  CHAPTER NINE

  JOTTINGS FROM TUSCANY

  by Haverford Downs

  As I told my faithful readers last week, this particular old gent was transported by an extremely uncomfortable magic carpet (B.A. steerage, Apex ticket, with all the delights of plastic food and stewardesses trained by the Obergrüppenführer at Heathrow) to Chiantishire, that old-established suburb of Wimbledon, which can’t have changed much since Britannia ruled the waves and wogs stopped at Calais. It’s true that there are a few natives here (known as ‘Eyeties’ to the British colonials), who are useful to serve as maids, waiters or ‘chaps to look after the swimmingpool’. Speaking of which, when one such status symbol ran dry here the other day, a child was lowered into a pit to clean out the drains, so the nineteenth-century tradition of infant chimneysweeps is alive and well and living in Tuscany.

  Is there, Informer readers may well ask, no underground movement, no Maquis, no risorgimento fighting British Imperialism? Well, the wartime resistance movement was run by the Communists, who stood almost single-handed against the Nazi menace, and suffered heroically for it. The ‘maid’ in the villa in which I am lodged for the purposes of research (she is a statuesquely beautiful and highly intelligent woman who is called ‘maid’, rather in the way the South Africans call elderly black servants ‘boy’) suffered the horror of seeing both her parents shot by the Germans whilst the aristocrats from the local castle entertained the S.S. officers to black market dinners of wild boar and chocolate sauce.

  At this point in his writing a white pigeon which had been fluttering round the swimming-pool alighted on the table, took two steps forward and excreted on the ‘Jottings’, no doubt in the interests of historical accuracy. Haverford took a new sheet of paper and continued to compose, undeterred.

  By and large, of course, your average Euro-Communist is about as far to the left as an English liberal, but here, among these dry Tuscan hills, they have a tougher breed, who hark back to the guerrilla fighters of 1943. Typical of them is our local priest, Don Marco. In many ways, the good arciprete is nostalgic for the days of Stalin and he regards Russian glasnost rather as he would the Vatican bank investing heavily in Durex. ‘If you English tourists get too powerful around here,’ he told me over a glass of grappa, and with a particularly charming smile, ‘I think I can remember where the old machine-guns are buried.’

  Footnote. I happened to meet a former girlfriend while out for a constitutional among these perfumed hills and blow me if, much to her chagrin, I couldn’t remember ever having slid between the sheets with her. Half-way through the conversation, of course, the penny dropped but how was I then to say, in the words of that potent piece of cheap music, ‘Ah, yes, I remember it well’? A bottle of Chianti Classico for the reader who suggests the most tactful way out of this conversational senso unico before next Saturday.

  Haverford wrote in a small, meticulously neat hand. He would telephone in his copy but didn’t want to be overheard by the family who might be critical, so he decided to call on Fosdyke the next day and use the telephone in the house his fan was guarding. He watched the slim body of Samantha dive into the pool and thought that by the time she came of an age for love he would no doubt be drifting round eternity in the unwelcome company of his wife with all rogering out of the question. In the hot sunshine his body stirred uselessly to life and he fell asleep.

  But Haverford’s daughter found sleep that night hard to come by. It was very hot and she lay under the single sheet staring up at the high moonlit ceiling and thinking about T. Buckland Kettering. Her mind vacillated between laughing at her fears and suspecting a terrible mystery. Surely, she told herself, there was nothing unusual about a family who let their house and left no address. Had she not wildly exaggerated the significance of the advertisement? Might not the Ketterings specify girl children only as reasonably as ‘no pets’ or ‘using the premises for business purposes forbidden’? Perhaps the dinner on the terrace by candlelight was no more than a helpful suggestion intended to add to their pleasure in ‘La Felicità’, as was the idea of a trip across the Mountains of the Moon to Urbino. All that seemed to her to be like a man writing, a foreigner to Italy, advising other foreigners, a teacher displaying his wisdom to likely pupils. And yet… (Far away now she heard the dog Manrico, chained up once more, lamenting its departed master.) And yet, the letters were signed ‘S.’ for Sandra Kettering, and Sandra must have left the typed note of her most private intentions in the Piero book opposite ‘The Flagellation’. Had she been wrong in all her first impressions?

  And ‘B.’, she thought, what did that mean B., lost and gone forever? Surely no more than that
the Ketterings were splitting up, like so many of their acquaintances, as even the Pargeters might have done, had it not been for the late, unexpected, unplanned arrival of Jacqueline. The Ketterings also had a young child, Signor Fixit had told her, little Violetta, who came ‘as a bit of an afterthought’; but that wouldn’t prevent a separation, even a divorce, which, it seemed, Sandra Kettering welcomed. So Buck had gone off somewhere. No doubt, he had found another woman, and to Sandra and to Molly, he was gone for ever.

  Then she remembered the car that had interrupted their dinner on the terrace. She had walked down the stairs and for a moment been taken for, and almost become, Kettering’s wife. She couldn’t guess why Sandra Kettering in her detailed instructions had arranged for her to be there and for that mistake to be made. And then she thought of how she might find an answer to some of her questions.

  When the envelope had arrived she had put it on the mantelpiece in the small sitting-room, but almost at once she had decided to take it more closely into her possession. She told herself that it must be kept carefully, to be left out for Mrs Kettering when their stay was over, so she had put it in a compartment of her handbag. It had remained there, she was sure, even after the note in the Piero book had vanished. So now she got up carefully, her nightdress clinging damply to her body, and laid the sheet back over her sleeping husband with as much respect as if he had been dead. Then she lifted her bag from the chair, turned the door handle with exaggerated care and made for the kitchen. Safely there, she lit the gas, with one of the solid and reliable wooden matches Signor Fixit had been able to find for her, and put on the kettle. She made herself a cup of English breakfast tea and then, with the kettle still boiling, steamed open the envelope. When the gum was melted she opened it and slid out a single sheet of unheaded paper on which a short message was written in Italian. She took it into the sitting-room where the dictionaries were kept and did her best to translate: It is excellent news that the whole business has been done successfully. Now we can enjoy the future without anxiety. We will meet very soon, I hope. For the moment I send this messenger. Distinti saluti. Claudio. Molly turned the paper over and found a list of figures prefixed with lire signs and equipped with what seemed to her to be generous allowances of noughts. This list was headed with the letters, A.I.C., which meant nothing to her.