Picture of Defeat

by John Harris

  ‘My wife ran away with the junior partner. I decided to throw it up and paint.’

  ‘And you made a success of it?’

  ‘On the contrary. I made a failure.’

  ‘And this is why you are only a sergeant? In the Italian army an avvocato would become an officer.’

  ‘He would in the British army, too, but I blotted my copybook.’

  ‘By becoming an artist?’

  ‘The Law Society doesn’t approve of bohemian types with long hair and red ties. They prefer stiff collars, dark suits and frozen faces. They’ll probably make me an officer later if I purge myself of my contempt by promising not to be a painter after the war.’

  She gave a little giggle. ‘Will you?’

  ‘I think it would be more sensible. While starving as a painter I noticed that my friends – all lawyers, some of them very bad ones, too – rarely went hungry. Obesity, in fact, can be an occupational hazard among lawyers.’

  She looked sympathetic. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘It is good to be a painter. Very simpatico. But’ – she paused – ‘that is head logic, and perhaps it is better to be a lawyer, which is stomach logic. Money is important. Especially to Italians.’

  He agreed. ‘It’s occurred to me several times that, with the mess the war’s caused, when it’s over there’s going to be a great need for lawyers – and there’s one thing lawyers always make sure of and that is that they’re not poor.’

  She studied him carefully, realising that with his strong features and crisp dark hair he was better looking than she had thought. ‘Is this true why they didn’t make you an officer?’ she asked.

  ‘Not really. I didn’t go to Oxford or Cambridge, so I wasn’t considered an okay type.’

  ‘An okay type?’

  ‘Gentlemanly – cavalleresco, signorile. Also, the officer who interviewed me was a pansy.’

  ‘Come?’

  ‘Omosessuale. He liked fair-haired, slender young men with smooth cheeks.’

  ‘But this is not a very important job for a man as clever as you.’

  ‘The only alternative was giving dull lectures on security to sullen soldiers who didn’t want to listen. So I volunteered for overseas because I met a man who’d just come home from Africa and he said overseas was more fun than at home. He was right. It is.’

  She studied him again, deciding the British army was full of madmen. ‘I think they do not appreciate you,’ she said firmly.

  ‘I think the same.’

  ‘I also think you are a rebel.’

  He grinned. ‘When the war’s over, I shall never polish my shoes or call any man “sir” again as long as I live.’

  A patrol went past outside, heavily armed, and another group of soldiers was piling stores not far away. They worked slowly as though they resented the work. But, in the restaurant, no one even bothered to watch them and the elderly waiters moved between the tables as though it were just a normal day.

  Tamara Detto Banti pushed at her corned beef rissole for a while then she looked up at Pugh.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I keep thinking about those paintings and what they’re worth. Forty-eight million lire!’

  ‘You’d need a good lawyer.’

  She gave him a sharp look. ‘I’ve finished with lawyers for the moment,’ she said. ‘I thought he wanted to marry me.’

  ‘Some lawyers work for their clients without wanting to marry them,’ Pugh pointed out.

  ‘Yes’ – she considered for a moment – ‘but 48 million lire! It frightens me.’

  ‘You could get used to it.’

  She pushed at the corned beef again. ‘When I came here,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I thought I might perhaps get a few thousand. I never realised there were all these paintings in existence.’

  Pugh toyed with the stem of his glass. ‘Let’s not overestimate at the moment,’ he said. ‘Or, for that matter, underestimate. I’ve got a disbelieving nature and I think your uncle’s been bilking your father for years. I don’t think he’s stopped now he’s dead, either.’

  ‘That is a very cruel thing to say.’

  ‘It’s the way lawyers think. It’s also the way Intelligence sergeants think. Both are naturally suspicious. There ought to be drawings – pencil sketches, that sort of thing. But there aren’t, and I suspect Marco has them somewhere. They’d be worth money too. And there ought to be one or two other canvasses. I’m surprised there aren’t any half-finished ones. I suspect Marco’s got rid of those also.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that!’

  Pugh smiled. ‘That’s not the opinion of Avvocato Tassinari,’ he said. ‘And he knew them both for years. If we could establish where they are, we could claim them and that would push up the value of the estate a bit more.’

  Her face fell. ‘I feel so mean,’ she said. ‘Especially as Marco planned on it all being his.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry too much about Marco,’ Pugh said. ‘Marco knows how to look after himself.’

  ‘But he seemed to be making plans.’

  ‘You should never make plans before the law’s had its say,’ Pugh said. ‘That’s why I’m advising you not to be too certain. We have to establish the genuineness of the canvases first.’

  ‘Who else would have painted them?’

  ‘Pupils. It happens. And your father had a few from time to time.’

  ‘But his name’s on them.’

  ‘An unscrupulous dealer wouldn’t hesitate to put it there.’

  She stared at him. ‘You know,’ she observed, ‘I’m sure you’re not really as unpleasant as you seem to be. But you are being very cruel to Marco. Don’t you trust him?’

  Pugh smiled. ‘Your father was known for his lack of concentration in his later years,’ he said.

  Marco still looked shaken when they returned to the house. He had been at the brandy bottle again and had a murderous look in is eye. When Pugh asked about the arrangements for the packing and transportation of the newly discovered Detto Bantis, he remained totally indifferent.

  ‘You’ve changed a bit,’ Pugh observed.

  ‘I thought I was going to get something for them,’ Marco answered sullenly.

  ‘I’m sure we could come to some arrangement.’ Tamara was still faintly apologetic.

  ‘Come to some arrangement!’ Marco said explosively in English. ‘After all the work I wasted on the goddam things!’

  He stood staring at the pictures for some time and was just about to disappear to the bottle again when Tamara turned to Pugh.

  ‘Let me make this clear, Sergeant Poo,’ she pointed out. ‘I’m not going to take all these pictures.’

  ‘You ought to think it over seriously,’ Pugh said.

  ‘I’ve thought it over. I’ve been thinking it over all evening. I can split 48 million lire down the middle without missing it.’

  ‘Suppose they’re not genuine,’ Pugh said. ‘Then you’d be splitting a few thousand, which doesn’t leave you a lot.’

  There was silence for a moment as this information was digested, then Marco appeared from behind the easel, still holding the brandy bottle, which he made no attempt to hide.

  ‘They’re genuine,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘All this is wasting time,’ Tamara pointed out. ‘I want to share them.’

  ‘Down the middle?’ Marco asked, and her eyes flickered to Pugh.

  ‘You can do what you like with your own property,’ Pugh said. ‘But down the middle sounds a bit overgenerous to me. If you insist, I should suggest a portion.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘One-tenth.’

  ‘One-tenth?’ Marco’s face flushed angrily.

  ‘That’s 4,800,000 lire. That’s not a bad gift, especially since it doesn’t have to be made.’

  The night was windless and they could smell the damp in the air as lorries kept pounding past the house out of the town.

  Marco seemed to recover a little of his good temper, as though he’d decided finally that o
ne-tenth of the value of his brother’s paintings was better than nothing, and he entered into the discussion about getting them packed – if not with enthusiasm, then at least without hostility.

  ‘I might keep one.’ Tamara was staring thoughtfully at the canvasses. ‘For myself. After all he was my father.’

  Tassinari frowned his disapproval and she went on defiantly. ‘Sometimes, people do things for other reasons than money.’

  ‘I’d get rid of them,’ Marco said. ‘Quickly. Values change and the value of these will not go up.’

  ‘I’ll still keep one.’

  Marco gave them a last drink. He was in a better temper but by this time he was also very drunk.

  The house was full of the rubbish accumulated by two elderly men over a long time, and the spare bedrooms were a mass of junk. Pugh gave up the bed he’d been allotted to Tamara and was dossing down in the studio in a shambles of lay figures, costumes, models and hats. As he undressed, he was still thinking about the estate. Like Tassinari, he was puzzled at the absence of any pencil sketches. There was nothing of any value beyond the paintings and he was sure Marco had extracted a few things here and there to be sold privately. They’d probably never find them now, but under the circumstances perhaps it was fair enough, even if it wasn’t very legal. Whatever Marco could get for them could help soothe his injured spirit, and pay for his years of work, and somehow he had a feeling that Tamara wouldn’t object. She was too soft-hearted by a long shot.

  It rained hard for the funeral. Boccaccio Detto Banti, who had been lying in state in his bedroom, finally had the lid of the coffin placed over him and screwed down.

  The undertaker, a thin man called Ciasca with a lugubrious face that seemed to have been expressly designed to fit his profession, was dressed in a black frock coat turning green with age, and the hearse was of funereal black, chipped and scarred here and there but decorated with chromium-plate polished with British army Brasso. Huge foliated lanterns at the corner reflected the dim grey day as the cherubs, death’s heads, extinguished torches and weeping angels dripped water. One of the glass panels was cracked and the black and silver curtains inside had a tatty, faded look about them. The horse was so old it seemed as if it were about to drop dead at any moment.

  Because of the possibility of a German counter-attack, Ciasca was eager to get the business over and done with, but he had been unable to obtain mutes to carry the coffin and in the end Pugh allowed himself to be roped in with Marco. With the undertaker and the one attendant he had managed to raise, they brought the coffin unsteadily downstairs, Pugh hoping to God he wouldn’t trip and fall and bring the lot down after him. The crucifix on the lid was loose and was hanging upside-down, and Pugh thought the body must have shifted because the whole weight of the coffin seemed to be on his shoulder.

  ‘Easy now,’ Ciasca warned.

  ‘What if the horse moves?’ Pugh asked.

  ‘Fiorello will never move,’ Ciasca said. ‘He hasn’t the strength or the youth. And that is good and the reason why horse hearses are always best. Motor hearses are faster, but arriving with a shriek of brakes and a cloud of dust doesn’t add decorum to a funeral. This is a taxing profession, Signore, and one I have never liked, but if there’s one thing I can rely on it is that Fiorello will not move. Sometimes he doesn’t move even when I wish him to.’

  The priest looked as old as Avvocato Tassinari and just as fragile and uncertain of his feet, and the two old men seemed to support each other into the cemetery. There were no followers except Tamara, Enrichetta from the kitchen, muttering under a black shawl, and two small boys and a dog who were there purely out of curiosity. Bocco Detto Banti had outlived most of his contemporaries, and those who were still around had obviously considered it would do them no good to get soaked. Instead of the funeral of a man whose name had once been lionised both in London and Rome, it looked more like the funeral of a small Neapolitan businessman.

  ‘All that is missing, Poo,’ Tamara said, ‘is the uncle from Rome.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘It’s not a who, it’s a what.’

  Tassinari explained. ‘Families in the south are always concerned with pride. A man in Naples who has lived all his life close to poverty still has to be buried with a show of histrionics, which includes an expensive coffin, flowers and an “uncle from Rome”.’

  ‘They hire them from an agency,’ Tamara said. ‘A distinguished old man who can produce a Roman accent and knows not to use his hands when he talks. He arrives either by train or in a well-polished car with a Rome number plate. The qualifications are a patrician manner and the ability to address strangers in the old-fashioned way. It brings dignity to the occasion and tempers the grief of the Neapolitans.’

  Tassinari coughed. ‘I have not been above acting the uncle from Rome when I have been short of money,’ he said. ‘Particularly as I have the ribbon of a Commendatore of the Crown of Italy. It was my father’s. It always adds to the occasion.’

  Tamara nodded understandingly and looked at the disbelieving Pugh. ‘Sometimes, Poo,’ she said, ‘when you are frowning, I think it would be a profession at which you would do well.’ She pulled a face. ‘Unfortunately, with the battle front between us and Rome, it is not possible. I imagine a lot of Roman uncles are having a thin time just now.’

  Waiting by the cemetery gate was a black car, from which stepped three men – Sansovino, the Mayor, and two of his bodyguards, obviously there because Sansovino considered it his duty to pay homage to Vicinamontane’s best-known inhabitant. For the first time, Pugh got a good look at him.

  ‘I’ve seen him before,’ he said to Tamara. In the Poggio Reale prison, he thought, frowning, just leaving after a visit to Tirandolo, the man he’d arrested for smuggling drugs.

  The cemetery was behind an enclosed wall and consisted of the usual shelves and numbered niches where the dead were stacked like a giant filing cabinet, and though there was no family tomb, Bocco had thriftily bought his place years before. Only half aware of the priest’s monotonous chant, Avvocato Tassinari swaying on his feet and Enrichetta’s angry muttering, Pugh found himself staring at Tamara Detto Banti. Like many Italian girls, she was small, but she had good legs and, though her nose was long in the Italian manner, it was well proportioned and her eyes were large and her hair the bronze of so many Florentines.

  She didn’t notice he was looking at her, but she was thinking about him. She wasn’t sure she could trust him, but she also had a feeling that she could probably trust him a great deal more than her uncle who stood alongside him, short, dark-haired, more like a gardener in a convent than anything else.

  As they left the cemetery, Pugh noticed that Ciasca, the undertaker, was quietly placing the flowers that had arrived to one side. When everybody had disappeared, he was sure, so would the flowers. Ciasca had confided in an aside that there was another funeral the following day and Pugh knew he would see no sense in leaving them to be stolen by someone else – probably to be made into a bride’s bouquet – when they could be used again the next morning. The last he saw of him was surreptitiously pushing the flowers into the back of the hearse as they left, while the scraggy, broken-kneed horse waited, head down, the rain dripping off its coat.

  When they returned to the house, all of them soaked, Enrichetta produced the small meal she had left ready. It consisted of a quiche made out of crushed British army biscuits, cheese, a single egg she had begged from the nearby farm, lumps of what looked like black pudding made from pig’s blood, and pieces of bully beef – like the biscuits, obtained from British army rations. Only the wine was worth tasting.

  Curiously, the town seemed to have emptied and all the lorries that had been in the square had gone. There were no people about either, and Pugh put it down to the weather, the expected German counter-attack, or both. Certainly there were no longer girls with their eyes glued to the windows.

  The priest and Ciasca, the undertaker, and his solitary attendant had turned up to
see Bocco Detto Banti on his way with a glass of wine, because no one in Italy turned down the chance of food and drink, and Pugh found himself facing the attendant, who was a square, dark man wearing a beard and an Italian army uniform jacket. He was short-legged like most Italian soldiers, and as they talked he introduced himself.

  ‘Foscari,’ he said, ‘Foscari, Enzio. Sergeant. 103rd Regiment.’

  He was a polite man, anxious to please and easy to talk to, and he was fascinated by Pugh’s accent and the lack of threadbareness in his uniform.

  ‘But you, of course, signore, are of the British army,’ he said. ‘I am very proud to meet you.’

  Wretchedly equipped and armed and totally devoid of comfort, Foscari had had more than he could stand of Mussolini and his heel-clicking generals with their salutes, medals, corruption and inefficiency. He had faithfully resisted all the way back across the North African desert and into Sicily and, when the armistice was declared, he was near Milan, recovering from a wound and acting as guard to a prison camp. On hearing General Eisenhower’s announcement, he had simply walked out, intending to return to his wife and family in Naples, where he had hoped to pick up the threads of his life. He did not consider himself a coward; he was simply tired of fighting a useless war for what he had come to accept as a wicked and corrupt government.

  ‘There are too many dead men,’ he said. ‘And there is always work for an undertaker.’ He smiled. ‘That was my job before the war, which is why Agente di Pompe Funebri Ciasca employed me. It provides money and food to help me on my way.’

  He brought news of British prisoners of war to the north. When the armistice had been arranged, they had received orders to stand fast, but to Foscari the only indication of peace had been painted signs on the wall of the building opposite the camp – ARMISTIZIO and BENITO FINITO – and two hours later he had seen a German column arrive and all the prisoners rounded up.

  ‘I decided I had better leave,’ he said.