Summer's Lease

by John Mortimer

  Molly’s last call was for wine. She drove into the courtyard of the Castello Crocetto, got out of the car and pulled the bell rope which usually summoned the old man in pyjamas. Nothing happened and she stood for a while looking out between the cypress trees over the hills and the track that led to ‘La Felicità’. Then a shutter high up in the wall was pushed open and the Baronessa looked out. ‘Come up, why don’t you?’ she called. ‘I seem to have been left alone in the world.’ A heavy key, which might, if misdirected, have stunned her, fell at her feet. ‘That is for the porta principale.’

  ‘I’m sorry it’s such a slog!’ The hall of the Castle was dusty and there were lighter squares on the plaster of the walls from which pictures had been removed. As Molly climbed what seemed an endless stone staircase, going up to and above a spreading chandelier that looked well past its days of being lit, she thought that whatever part the Dulcibenes might have had in Sandra’s business — and she had remembered that half her rent had to be paid into the Barone’s account — it could not have been large or enormously profitable. And then she heard the call from above her and looked up to see the grey-haired Baronessa leaning over the balustrade with sunlight streaming through an open door behind her. ‘See! We have retreated back to the nursery. We have become children again.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you. I only called in for wine.’

  ‘For wine? I thought you had come to ask more questions.’ The Baronessa led her into a small, bright sitting-room in which every available space was crowded with silver-framed photographs of the extended Dulcibene and Baderini families. Behind her were tall windows, balconies loaded with pots of geraniums and an aerial view of olive groves, woods and white ploughed fields which seemed to stretch as far as Siena.

  ‘I think,’ Molly said, ‘that most of my questions have been answered. One way or another.’

  ‘How delightful! Then it has been a successful holiday?’

  ‘Let’s say, it’s been interesting.’

  ‘Well, that’s the best we can hope for, isn’t it? Holidays can be terribly dull occasions. That is my husband.’ Molly was looking at a painting, hung over the fireplace, of a bald-headed man in a yellow sweater patting the head of a labrador retriever. She had last seen him, she remembered, dancing with Rosie Fortinbras at Nancy’s barbecue. ‘He is travelling now. He doesn’t like to come here, now we have had to sell so much of the land and the castle is not as he remembers it. So he is away trying to sell our wine abroad. It’s such good wine, so pure. But the French will mix it up with something not so good of their own, and a lot of Algerian rubbish, and call it Beaujolais. What can one do?’

  What you can do, Molly thought, is to retreat to the nursery and make the best of things with your good friend, Sandra Kettering. ‘I hear,’ she said, ‘you went to Bill Fosdyke’s funeral?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the Baronessa had a cigarette in her mouth and was grinding the little wheel of her gold lighter which, as usual, produced no answering flame. ‘Signor Fixit. He was quite a character.’

  ‘Nancy Leadbetter didn’t like him much.’

  ‘Nancy has some strange ideas. She doesn’t like everyone.’

  ‘But she likes Buck. Buck was her husband’s discovery.’

  ‘Oh, yes. She liked Buck. As I think I told you, you would find him very charming.’

  ‘No doubt I’ll find that out. When I meet him.’

  The Baronessa abandoned her lighter and found a box of kitchen matches under a pile of books. When she had the pleasure of blowing smoke out of her nostrils she said, ‘You expect to meet him, then?’

  ‘Well, yes. Shouldn’t I meet my landlord?’

  ‘I think you may find some difficulty. Even his wife and his daughter can’t find him.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry about that,’ Molly said. ‘But I may have more luck.’

  The Baronessa, who had greeted her smiling, looked hostile and yet anxious, as though she had said far more than she intended. She found an alabaster ashtray on the mantelpiece and ground out the cigarette she had lit with so much trouble. ‘Married life is not particularly easy for any of us. I’m sure you understand that, Mrs Pargeter.’

  ‘My father, in an article he wrote, suggested that it might be easier in Italy.’

  ‘Oh, really. And why is that?’

  ‘Italian women, he thinks, like husbands who can be violently jealous. Wasn’t it your husband’s ancestor who locked his wife up in this castle because she’d danced twice with another man?’

  ‘That’s an old story. And it may not even be true. Didn’t you come here to buy our wine? If you will come with me, I will find the keys.’

  So they went down to the clean white-washed cellars and Molly bought six bottles of the unchemicated, unpolluted Chianti that had not yet been adulterated by the French, and the Baronessa, smiling again now, took her money and saw her out to her car.

  ‘If you find Buck,’ she said, ‘you will send him my love, I’m sure.’

  ‘I will remember to do that,’ Molly told her, ‘when I meet him.’

  ‘Oh, and tell him to come and collect his terrible dog.’

  After Molly had gone, Vittoria Dulcibene climbed back into her eyrie under the castle roof. She stood on the high, geranium-filled balcony and watched as Molly’s car crawled across the hillside and down the dusty trail and then she turned back into the old nursery and made a telephone call to Rome.

  The telephone rang again in the piano nobile and Sandra Kettering’s high heels clicked across the marble-paved hallway. She greeted her friend Vittoria Dulcibene and then fell quiet, receiving information. Someone, it was now clear, knew where Buck Kettering was to be found and was on her way to visit him. Well, did Sandra want to know where her husband had hidden himself away, or did she not? Sandra undoubtedly did, and who was going to find him? An Englishwoman, it seemed, and like all the English she delighted in secrets. And then the Baronessa began to suggest how Buck might be found — by means of a small military operation like those she had planned when she was a schoolgirl, bicycling off to meet her friends in the hills behind San Pietro when the Germans were there to be fought. It would be best if some friends could go with Mrs Pargeter and watch carefully where she went to meet him. But when she knew where Buck had taken refuge, what did Sandra intend to do about him?

  ‘Sono affari miei,’ Sandra said. ‘That’s my business.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Hugh felt that he was behaving rather well. He had been greatly misunderstood in the matter of a postcard but he hadn’t complained unduly. Much had happened during the holiday in which he had taken no part, and some of it he hadn’t fully understood. He had been content to watch his youngest daughter swim under the water like a fish, to drive to the shops when he was asked to, even to remain calm when the house was invaded by an army of young people who emptied his refrigerator and managed to dispose of a dozen bottles of his Chianti. A man he had scarcely known had died. They had made some friends, it seemed, and been invited to the Villa Baderini. There had been trouble with the water, now happily over. In all of these events he had played his part patiently and well. Why was it then that he felt that his wife was involved in a secret life which excluded him? He watched her and wondered if the children’s wild suppositions could possibly be true. Could Molly be planning to leave him? He rejected the idea as he couldn’t conceive of anyone loving his wife more than he loved her himself, which was certainly, at that time, not enough to spur him into any sort of violent action.

  ‘I want to go off alone,’ Molly said. She was unpacking her shopping on the kitchen table and, in a desultory manner, Hugh was helping her put things away. He stood clasping a tin of peeled tomatoes and said, ‘With anyone?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not like you. I don’t write postcards.’

  ‘Am I ever going to hear the last of that?’

  Probably not.’

  ‘Then what do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll only be away for
a night. Something like that. I’d be back the day after.’

  Hugh put the tomatoes in the cupboard. He felt a pang of disappointment, as though a door to a new life had been closed. He said, ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘On the trip I’ve always planned to take. The Piero trail. Across the Mountains of the Moon to Urbino.’

  ‘Is it all that far?’

  ‘Too far to go there and back in a day.’ She knew all about it. ‘And it will take time to see the pictures. The children would only feel carsick and Jacky would hate it.’

  ‘All right. We’ll stay here then.’

  ‘Yes,’ was all she said.

  ‘I wish you’d tell me exactly what’s going on.’

  ‘I just want to see some pictures, that’s all. Is there anything very mysterious about that?’

  ‘Your father,’ he told her, and she gave a small sigh as at an unwelcome subject, ‘thinks I ought to tell you that I’ve had passionate affairs with all sorts of people, including Mrs Tobias. He thinks that’d interest you enormously. Would it?’

  ‘Not at all!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I shouldn’t believe it. Anyway, who’s Mrs Tobias?’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Oh, yes. I remember. The one you can’t wait to get back to.’

  ‘Look’ — he had behaved well, he told himself again, and he felt himself put upon, deprived in some way of his rights — ‘don’t you want me to come and see these pictures with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you don’t really want to.’

  It was true but he deserved a cause for complaint and thought of one. ‘We’ll be stuck here, without a car.’

  ‘Only for a night.’ The shopping was all unpacked. ‘You’re not going to starve.’

  ‘And when you get back, what’s going to happen?’

  ‘I suppose we’ll go home. Anyway, I’ll have seen the pictures.’

  ‘Well, go then. If you’re going. As soon as possible.’ He went to the door, glad to have something to feel resentful about, a pretext to match her anger about the postcard.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s what I mean to do.’

  Henrietta was in her room, trying on the gingham top one of the girls had left behind. Her mother came into the room and sat on her bed. ‘I want to go off,’ she said, ‘on a trip.’

  Henrietta, excited, stopped pouting in front of the mirror. ‘Who is it? You can tell me.’

  ‘It’s no one. I want to see some pictures.’

  ‘Honestly?’ Her daughter didn’t seem to believe her. ‘Does Dad know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he terribly upset?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Mum.’ Her daughter came and sat beside her on the bed. ‘I mean, I can understand, you know. Sometimes, well, most of the time I suppose, Dad’s not that exciting.

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling. I’m coming back.’

  ‘Oh. Well, that’s all right then.’ Did she detect a note of disappointment in her daughter’s voice? Molly hoped not and, putting her arms round her, hugged her unexpectedly. ‘Chrissie Kettering’ — Henrietta released herself tactfully after a decent interval — ‘liked you very much. She’s clever, isn’t she?’

  ‘Very clever.’

  ‘She wants to come and see us in London.’

  ‘I hope she will. Things can’t be too easy for her. And I hope that I don’t make them any more difficult.’ Molly got up, walked to the window and pushed it open. There was a deafening sound of insects and the faraway barking of Manrico.

  ‘Difficult for Chrissie?’ Henrietta didn’t understand. ‘Mum, why ever should you?’

  Molly didn’t explain. The telephone in the hall was ringing and she went down to answer it.

  ‘Mrs Pargeter? This is Nicholas Tapscott here. Enjoying yourself, are you? Been seeing some marvellous pictures?’ The voice on the telephone was particularly friendly.

  ‘No. Absolutely nothing. But I was planning to go to Urbino tomorrow. The Piero della Francesca trail.’

  ‘The pregnant Madonna at Monterchi. “The Resurrection” at Sansepolcro. And then over the hills for the great “Flagellation”. What a coincidence!’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Connie and I are going on exactly the same trip. So long since we did the Ducal Palace. At least we can remind ourselves of how the big boys did it. He knew a thing or two, did old Raphael. We thought of going tomorrow, back the next day, and then perhaps you and your old man would come to dinner…’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind, but…’

  ‘Taking the family, are you? To Urbino.’

  ‘No. No, I was going by myself.’

  ‘Then why don’t you snitch a lift with Connie and me. No point in trailing over there in two cars is there? I mean we won’t force ourselves on you. Toddle off on your own, by all means, to absorb the works of art.’

  In the end Molly agreed. She could leave the family the car and so be free of some of the guilt she felt in leaving them. No doubt the Tapscotts would leave her alone for what she had to do, which included looking at the pictures.

  ‘Be round at ‘La Felicità’ at eight o’clock,’ Nicholas Tapscott promised. ‘Then we can do “The Resurrection” before lunch.’

  That night Molly packed a small bag to be ready for the morning. She put in the book of matches from the Motel Vallombrosa and thought of its source, her old friend Rosie Fortinbras. Rosie had done the trail too, but she must have done it in the other direction from Urbino back to Arezzo, before they met in the apartment on the Piazza del Campo. Rosie had, perhaps, no more than hinted that she had seen Buck but Molly knew her well enough to be sure that visiting motels was not her style, unless she had been to such an unlikely refuge for a very special reason. And was not Rosie, on her own evidence, the only Brit that Buck could trust?

  And if Buck had been there, her faith in her journey was so far beyond reason, why should he not be there still waiting for her to expound, as all the detectives in all the stories she had read did in the last chapter, the brilliance of her deductions. Before she zipped up her bag she put in it, beside the book of matches, the photograph of Buck taken by the waiter by chance when the Pargeter family were having a drink in Siena during the first week of their holiday.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘The frescos in Arezzo are the centre of Piero’s career and have been considered his chief claim to immortality,’ her father had said when she told him where she was going.

  ‘You’ve been reading Kenneth Clark.’ She remembered the essay.

  ‘It’s one of the best books here.’

  ‘You didn’t find anything in it?’ she asked him.

  ‘Of course. It’s packed with good things. His discussion of the enigma of “The Flagellation”…’

  ‘No. I mean, did you find a sheet of paper in it, a sort of shopping-list?’ Was that, perhaps, the explanation for its disappearance. Had Haverford merely removed the clue from the book and lost it?

  ‘A shopping-list?’

  ‘Yes, in a way.’

  ‘And it’s gone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that inconvenient for you?’

  ‘Not really. I can remember it very well. And I don’t think I’ll need it any more.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’

  Nicholas Tapscott had telephoned to suggest they start at 7.45. ‘We might just knock off the frescos before breakfast.’ He and his wife collected Molly in a car which was as white, elderly and dusty as the Tapscotts themselves. They arrived in Arezzo, as Nicholas said, ‘dead on schedule’, well before nine o’clock.

  Although she had done her best to prepare herself for Arezzo, Molly still had difficulty in making out the story. Things were not made easier by the fact that the frescos were only illuminated when someone put money into a machine, and so were often plunged into sudden darkness, like Hugh�
��s old bedsitter when the meter ran out. In many places the paint had faded, leaving naked stretches of wall, blotting out half a battle, the legs of a torturer or a woman’s face. Then, as the lights came on and the walls were lit up with sky blue and stone grey, the green of grapes and olives, the pale red of wine held up to the light, she saw the round, invariably handsome, always unsmiling faces, with eyelids that seemed heavy as stone, looking down with perpetual detachment and even, in the case of the women, a kind of contempt.

  It was only after a while that it became clear that these aloof people were engaged in some long and obscure drama, a plot that covered centuries and continents and included virgins and emperors, dying warriors and men in tall hats with the faces of remorseless judges.

  There had been a Mass in progress when they came into the church, and she and the Tapscotts had sat obediently and respectfully at the back, although Italian families and German visitors strolled and chatted in the aisles, children ran across the empty stretches of stone floor and braver tourists approached as near as they dared to the priest and the altar to peer up at the frescos, then lost in the shadows. Now the service was over and they walked freely into the choir. Nicholas and Connie Tapscott lifted the telephones that described the paintings in a variety of languages and then lounged by them as though they were chatting to old friends from England.

  Standing looking upwards, her guide-book open in her hand, Molly did her best to follow ‘The Story of the True Cross’, born of a branch of the tree from which Eve took the apple, planted in dead Adam’s mouth and cut down to decorate the palace in which Solomon received the Queen of Sheba. The lights went out and when they came on again the Emperor Constantine was sleeping in his tent before battle, seeing the vision which would turn the Roman Empire to the True Faith. Then she saw the Cross lost and a latter-day Judas was shut up in a dry well until he told where it lay buried. A waterless well, she thought, a place of terror even in the days when Piero painted.