‘Your daughter is beautiful,’ Angeletti said, in a voice to induce instant cringe. ‘She has very fine long toes.’ His sudden honeyed tone of paternal tenderness brought Alice almost to violence. She stared fixedly at the small, unprepossessing little creature who was not her daughter. Not yet. Alice did not know her; had not touched her; felt nothing for her except fear and the dull futile cruelty of the fact that Jem was gone and in Jem’s place was this small mockery; this shrinkie-dink with Jem’s long feet. The circumstances of that first meeting with Jem’s daughter served only to overpower her with feelings of remoteness and inadequacy.
But it squared, she thought, bitterly, that Angeletti, whose coercion and domineering had had the effect, all through last evening, of keeping her from her dying friend, would now be able to master with such immediacy a package of wholly ersatz emotions. Like all bully-boys everywhere, he would be sentimental – to a degree. She turned woodenly from the window and began to walk away. As Angeletti fell into step beside her, she registered for the first time that he was carrying a half-dozen large, new, padded envelopes and a bright green plastic bag. Its colour was such as she had come morbidly to associate with Flora’s female relations, but Angeletti’s bag said Marks & Spencer across it.
‘You’ve been out shopping,’ she said. Angeletti once again took a hold of her arm.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Mrs Riley, we need to talk.’ He led her away from the corridor towards an outer door and a courtyard. Beyond that lay a small garden and a chapel.
‘If I could put the screws on you a little,’ he said as they walked. ‘I need to go quite soon. I have some urgent personal matters awaiting me back home.’ He was having more trouble with Schmutzburger, Alice envisaged. And with Mary-Lou and MacMahon. Perhaps they were all beating down his door trying to flog him stolen manuscripts. Alice was finding him very puzzling. Why and how was it that he had somehow co-opted whole events? Jem’s book, Jem’s dying, the baptism of Jem’s baby. Jem was nothing to him. He had not heard of her before the previous night.
Angeletti had taken a memo pad and a fountain pen from the pocket of Father Mullholland’s shirt. He wrote down four telephone numbers and handed them to her. At the top of the page he had written ‘Giovanni Angeletti’, in looped American cursive. It approximated so much more closely to Jem’s writing than any current calligraphic fashion in England, that even this detail somehow compounded Alice’s resentment.
‘You can call me at home on the top one,’ he said. ‘Don’t lose it, OK? It’s unlisted. The second is my office. Now it’s just possible you may need the last two. Those are my parents’ home in San Francisco and the cabin in New Hampshire.’
‘Thank you,’ Alice said. She stowed the paper in her pocket.
‘I appreciate it may be difficult to call from here,’ he said. ‘Call collect if at any time you feel you’d like to.’ He made another of his ill-timed shots at humour. ‘Preferably not before eight-thirty a.m.,’ he said, ‘since I detected that you didn’t like to engage with my recorded message.’ Alice thanked him again. Angeletti went on. ‘Regrettably, I’ve had no opportunity to make photocopies of your friend’s manuscripts,’ he said.
Alice looked at him. ‘I notice you’re not denying they’re “her” manuscripts?’ she said.
Angeletti behaved as if he hadn’t heard. ‘If you feel able to entrust them to me,’ he said, ‘I can deal with the matter fairly rapidly. How about that? You still sleeping with one eye open?’
Alice hesitated a moment. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You can take them.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Riley,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate that. I really appreciate your trust.’
‘Oh,’ Alice said. ‘That’s all right.’
‘Next item,’ he said. ‘I just had a word with Sister Teresa about you. She’d take it as a favour if you could stick around for a matter of weeks. She’d like to make a guest room available to you in the convent. Is that a possibility at all? Or is it a problem for you with regard to your “business capacity”?’ Alice glanced at him suspiciously. ‘But you’ll want to discuss it with your husband,’ he said.
‘It’s not a problem,’ she said. ‘I ought to be selling houses, but that’s all right.’
Angeletti looked at her curiously. ‘You sell real estate?’ he said.
‘Why not?’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. And how about Mr Riley? He also sells real estate?’
‘Yes,’ Alice said, daring the stammer to come back.
‘I was in the stores for a few minutes just now,’ he said. ‘I took the liberty of buying you some things.’
‘Things?’ she said.
‘Clothes,’ he said. ‘It struck me you could use a change of clothes.’ He gave her the green plastic bag.
‘Thanks,’ she said. She looked in the bag. In it were two white shirts, a plastic pack containing three pairs of sober white cotton knickers, a plain dark navy skirt and a navy cardigan.
‘Gosh,’ Alice said. ‘Thanks, Angeletti.’ She registered that what Angeletti had acquired for her looked remarkably like a school uniform. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to say that I smell.’
‘We’ll consider it the Odour of Sanctity,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it, Mrs Riley.’
‘I’ll arrange to pay you back as soon as I can,’ she said.
‘My treat,’ he said. ‘There’s a little cash in there – just to see you out until you are re-united with your pocket book.’
‘You’re very kind,’ she said. ‘I will certainly pay you back.’
‘Now to the last item,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Riley, but I am unacquainted with your particular brand of spiritual allegiance.’
‘What?’ Alice said, feeling the return of the irritable edge.
‘Given your surname,’ Angeletti said insidiously, ‘I have hazarded with Father Mullholland that your husband is almost certainly Catholic.’
Alice paused here, in her progress along the path, to gawp at him, first with indignation and then with terror.
‘Mrs Riley,’ he said, as he had said once before. ‘Is your husband Catholic?’
An icicle was again seizing her by the throat. Jem had left her the baby. And now the whole bunch of them – the adorable priest and all – they were all hot-foot to wrest Jem’s baby from her. They would refuse to yield up the child to her until she produced for their scrutiny a card-carrying Catholic husband. Jem’s baby had appeared to her, not fifteen minutes before, as a mere unlikeable nothing; an affront to her grief for Jem. Now, suddenly now, she knew that she would fight to keep that baby. She would lie and cheat if necessary. And what’s more she would not stammer. She would never stammer again. Not as long as she lived. And, dammit, Matthew was a Catholic, wasn’t he? The only problem was, he wasn’t her husband.
‘Yes,’ Alice said, ‘Matthew is Catholic.’
‘And the marriage ceremony?’ Angeletti said, snooping offensively. ‘That was in the Catholic Church?’
Alice wrestled valiantly to rouse within herself a capacity for deception. She hoped that Jem might be her inspiration.
‘W—’ she said. ‘The th-th-thing-thing. No, Angeletti. It wasn’t.’ Angeletti, much to her surprise, seemed more amused by her embarrassment than troubled by her disclosure. He emitted the second laugh of their acquaintance. ‘But if you think,’ she said, ‘if you think I’m going to let that bunch of Holy Romans claw Jem’s baby off me—’
‘Now look,’ Angeletti said. ‘Please. There’s nobody here wishes you any harm, Mrs Riley. Relax. What do you take these guys for? You think they’re all avid to disregard your friend’s wishes?’ Alice, still suspicious, was mollified for the moment.
‘I’d like to offer you a piece of advice,’ Angeletti said. ‘Maybe you could stop behaving like you were a captive Turk at the Siege of Vienna.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Alice said, feeling justly rebuked.
‘That’s OK,’ Angelet
ti said. ‘Try to bear it in mind. Your friend was Catholic, Mrs Riley. This is a Catholic child. There is perfectly legitimate concern around here for your daughter’s spiritual well-being.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said gloomily. She imagined, with more than a little misgiving, the series of excruciating little ‘talks’ which she would have with Jem’s priest – rather like the Sex Education class at school. She thought, suddenly, of Roland’s father. They were not unalike, physically, Jem’s priest and Peter Dent. Only Peter Dent was taller and markedly better-looking. As she wondered, grimly, whether Father Mullholland kept bees, she saw that they had reached the door of the chapel.
In the chapel, Alice watched Angeletti as he touched the compass points of his powerful upper body with his fingertips which he had dipped in the holy water. Then he led her towards the nave.
‘The thing is,’ Alice said, feeling unnerved – first with terror and now with gratitude – to the point of wishing to come clean, ‘Angeletti—?’ But politeness arrested her mid-sentence, because Angeletti was in the act of genuflexion. She wanted to tell him that Matthew Riley was not really her husband. When he had accomplished his gesturing, he took hold of Alice’s arm. He was looking fixedly down the nave towards the altar as he walked, which was making opportunities for unburdening rather difficult. Angeletti stopped beside one of the pews and looked around. Alice did the same. She had never been in a Catholic church before and the smell of candle wax and incense intrigued her. So did the somewhat relentless pictures on the walls. Jesus was stumbling all over the road, dragging His cross and looking up to see His mother staring at Him dolefully. Alice’s memory threw up fragments of nervous irreverence. Better he should have been a doctor. She turned again to Angeletti, her agitation quite evident.
‘Angeletti?’ she said. ‘There is something I need to explain.’
‘You’re in church, Mrs Riley,’ Angeletti said unexpectedly. ‘I would strongly recommend that you try unloading it on to the Deity.’ Alice looked at him in surprise.
‘But I’d like to tell you something,’ she said. She felt Angeletti tense slightly. ‘Excuse me—’
‘Come on and try it,’ he said. His amiable voice belied the whiff of coercive implication in the hand tightening on her arm. ‘On your right knee now, Mrs Riley. Just imagine you are dropping a nice, respectful little curtsey to God.’ Alice, since she thought it expedient in the circumstances, dropped with alacrity a nice, respectful little curtsey to God. She wondered, as she did so, whether Angeletti was seriously unhinged. Perhaps he was some sort of maniac who would at any moment proclaim himself incarnated from the Book of Revelation?
‘Angeletti?’ Alice said. ‘I really do need to talk.’ But for Angeletti, it seemed, she had become his captive Turk at the Siege of Vienna. He handed her into the pew.
‘Kneel, Mrs Riley,’ he said. ‘I recommend it to you. Try the power of prayer.’ Alice knelt. She put her head in her hands. Then, to oblige Angeletti, she tried the power of prayer.
She could think of nothing to tell Angeletti’s God, nor remotely how to address him. She moved her lips silently and respectfully for a moment, hoping that Angeletti would be appeased. Angeletti’s God quite evidently spoke another language and had very different tastes in interior decorating. Might he like some Latin? She wondered for a moment whether she could legitimately recite from the Aeneid. But perhaps that was too pagan? Or was he really in favour of all that laudamus te, glorificamus te, adoramus te, etcetera? In the circumstances, it would sound like blatant and hypocritical crawling.
Alice spoke soundlessly, moving her lips and hearing the words in her head. ‘ “Elsie Marley’s grown so fine,”’ she said. ‘ “She won’t get up to feed the swine, But lies in bed till eight or nine.”’ She marked time and waited for the voice of God to boom at her from the walls of the temple. When it did not, she tried praying some more. ‘ “Dr Foster went to Gloucester In a shower of rain,”’ she said. She said it silently and respectfully, just as before. ‘ “He stepped in a puddle, Right up to his middle, And never went there again.”’ When she had done enough praying, she got up from the floor. She turned towards Angeletti, but Angeletti wasn’t there. He had gone to catch his aeroplane. He had important personal business to attend to when he got back home. There was Schmutzburger and Mary-Lou and, of course, MacMahon.
Chapter 32
The first thing Alice did once she left the chapel was contact Matthew Riley. It seemed to her a courtesy to let him know where she was. She did so from the visitors’ payphone, having first got change for one of Angeletti’s banknotes which were lying in an envelope in the bottom of the green plastic bag.
‘Pet,’ Matthew said, as though nothing had come between them, ‘where have you been? I’ve been that worried about you.’ Alice could hear, coming from the CD player in the background, the fine, edgy precision of Domenico Scarlatti. From this she deduced that Flora was in the room.
‘Back in a jiffy,’ Matthew said. ‘I’ll just switch off that crap on the gramophone.’ It was a curious thing about Matthew, Alice considered, that, for all he was up to the eyeballs in recent computer terminology, he still called the CD player ‘the gramophone’. She waited for him to get back.
‘Is Flora not with you?’ she said.
‘Just missed her, pet,’ Matthew said with a tone of regret, as if the news would come as a big disappointment to Alice. ‘She’s just popped round her nan’s.’ From this Alice deduced, with a newborn, open-eyed clarity, that Flora was currently raking through the drawers of the superior heritage-style investment property, looking for bank books and insurance policies.
‘Matt,’ she said, ‘I’m in Hampshire. I ought to have got in touch before, but it’s been a rather difficult day. My friend Jem McCrail died this morning.’ She wiped her eyes quickly on Angeletti’s handkerchief, to banish new tears.
‘Oh aye,’ Matthew said. ‘Now don’t you go upsetting yourself.’ Alice blinked as she heard Matthew’s words – detached, as they now were, from his congenial physical presence. A woman most dear to her had died that day. A woman dearer than the moon and the stars. Dearer, certainly, than Matthew Riley – and she was not to ‘go upsetting herself’? Did the man have a part of his brain missing? Or what was the matter with him?
‘There’s a newborn baby,’ Alice said, sounding as business-like as possible. ‘Jem has left me to care for her child.’
‘Blow me down!’ Matthew said amiably. ‘Nev-er. A little bairn, did you say?’ Alice suddenly realized that Matthew was eating an apple. She could hear the crunch which made a sound as if she were linked up to the horse byre.
‘The baby’s premature,’ she said. ‘I’m staying over at the convent.’
‘ “Convent”?’ Matthew said. ‘Never in a henhouse full of bloody nuns, bonny lass?’
‘It’s a Catholic hospital for the dying,’ Alice said.
‘Sounds like a ball of fun,’ Matthew said. He had evidently made his way to the core of the apple by now and was wrestling with the cellulose and the pips. ‘What say I come round and get you?’ Alice recoiled in astonishment.
‘If you could possibly put my handbag in the post …’ she said.
‘No worries,’ Matthew said. ‘I’ll drop round. Three shakes of a lamb’s tail. What’s the address?’
Matthew Riley had felt a little ashamed, truth to tell, since he had allowed his intended to be bullied out into a cab the previous evening by a man ponced up like Count Dracula, who was clearly out for her blood. He owed Alice one, no doubt of it, but things went deeper than that. He had enjoyed two nights of passion with the belle dame sans merci. And, truth to tell, now that she was presently not with him in the house, he was suffering from cold feet. The familiar presence of his computer mags meant he could not quite reconstruct the magic of that bejewelled Parisian hideout and he had begun to think perhaps it had not been real. And Flora’s assault on Alice had really been quite unnerving. Mother McCree, but the enchanted princess could really chew b
ent nails! And the opera had been a right piss-off. All those screeching women and the bloody rows of men around the altar. Just like bloody church.
And Flora had spent all the following day discussing the price of coffins. She had weighed up burial or cremation. Her mother and her grandmother, it seemed, had expressed a preference for burial but what of it? Hadn’t the old biddies cremated themselves already? Flora had seemed to get quite worked up about the Protestant graveyard. Her father was buried in the graveyard, she said, and she didn’t want the old bats near him. She had decided upon cremation.
Matthew had surprised himself, that afternoon, with the vehemence of his negative emotions. He was passionate about Flora, he knew that, but passion, he had begun to suspect, was a game for mugs. And the thought of returning to Paris gave him increasingly less joy. Flora’s friends in Paris had been nothing but a bunch of faggots. And, besides that, they all spoke bloody French.
Alice’s voice on the telephone now sounded reassuringly familiar. There was not much wrong with Alice, pretty little pet that she was. She cooked the supper far too late, but that was a minor failing. Her mother was just the same. And his father-in-law-to-be had always been really champion. The whole thing could turn out to be an almighty bloody embarrassment. He had his graduate studies to think of. Whatever could have got into him that day in the fairy’s bower? Chucking his prospects away like that when he was sitting with his rump in the butter.
‘Pet,’ he said with the conviction of those blessed with the facility for re-writing history. ‘Bygones be bygones and all that. I’m sorry ol’ Flora upset you last night. All a bit over the top really.’ Alice was momentarily stumped for words. It was suddenly profoundly irrelevant to her – as though Matthew and Flora and the dream-home and the co-ordinated bedlinen and the file-box with all her recipe cards existed in another world.
Temples of Delight Page 24