Temples of Delight

by Barbara Trapido

  Her mother, in the face of this outburst, looked momentarily numb. Then, in her confusion, she turned on her daughter.

  ‘Flora?’ she said in contempt and disbelief. ‘And no need to ask what you were doing to drive him there, of course.’

  ‘I was doing nothing,’ Alice said. ‘They fell in love.’

  ‘ “Nothing”?’ her mother said. ‘And you call this business “nothing”? This carry-on with Mr Whatshisname—?’

  ‘Giovanni,’ Alice said. ‘ “Joe-vanni”. It might help ease things a bit if you could bring yourself to use his name.’

  ‘All right, Alice,’ her mother said. ‘This Gee-o-varni. For a start, the wretched man is old enough to be your father.’

  ‘No he isn’t,’ Alice said irritably. ‘He’s only thirty-five. He looks a bit older because his hair’s receding. Anyway he can’t be anyone’s father. He’s infertile, if you want to know.’ The moment the quip had dropped from her, Alice knew it for a glaring strategic blunder, but having uttered it she couldn’t take it back. Mrs Pilling, oddly enough, seemed to ignore it.

  ‘Give him another five years, Alice, and he’ll be as bald as a coot,’ she said. Alice was aware that they had descended into pointless and unconstructive sniping.

  ‘But that’s silly,’ she said. ‘Really, Mum. That’s silly. You don’t love people because they’ve got hair. You’d see that for yourself if this wasn’t about me. Anyway, I think he’s divinely beautiful.’

  ‘Then you really have lost your mind,’ Mrs Pilling said. ‘He looks like the public executioner in that telly thing you used to watch with Flora.’

  Alice helped stack the tray. She tried to put her arm around her mother. ‘Oh Mum,’ she said. ‘Please …’ But her mother seemed very much against her. And Alice knew then, for real, that there were times when your parents turned around and they were wearing different faces.

  ‘I’m going to marry him,’ she said. ‘But first I’m going back to Oxford. That’s another thing you never tried to understand.’ Her mother ignored this last, instead she raised the weapon which Alice had so conveniently deposited at her feet.

  ‘Have you tried to ask yourself what he wants you for?’ she said. ‘Given that the man is impotant?’

  ‘Infertile,’ Alice said. ‘There is a difference, you know.’

  ‘Try giving up that baby,’ Mrs Pilling said. ‘See how long he sticks around.’

  Chapter 42

  ‘You will appreciate,’ Roland was saying, ‘that the lines OA and AB not only have magnitude. They have direction.’

  Iona, who sat beside him at her parents’ kitchen table, watched his well-made right hand move over the page as he marked each of the two lines with a small arrow head. She noted both the shapeliness of his pristine fingernails and that the lower joint of his fourth finger was slightly thicker than the rest and did not bend quite as readily as the others.

  ‘Does your finger hurt you?’ she said.

  Roland had his mind on the task in hand. ‘Only slightly when the weather changes,’ he said dismissively. ‘I took a catch rather awkwardly in the summer. Tell me what you notice about the arrows here, Iona.’

  Iona blinked at the arrows. ‘Parallel lines?’ she said idiotically, because she had allowed her mind to wander.

  Roland controlled impatience. ‘What can possibly be parallel with what?’ he said.

  Iona shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ she said. Fuck, she thought, but he’s so fucking lovely to look at. She lost herself for a moment in the delicate curve of Roland’s right nostril. Fucking jock, she thought. You couldn’t even bum a fucking smoke off him. She began to envisage him stripped to his underpants. Or perhaps he wore only his jockstrap under his trousers. Sod it. If only he’d just fancy her a bit. How come a fucking weed like Alice could provoke a great fucking bulge in his crotch and all she, Iona, could do for him was provoke words like ‘equidistant’ and ‘magnitude’? It was having blonde hair that did it. Blokes went fucking crazy for anything with blonde hair. Especially jocks. It was the only colour they could see. She could dye her hair purple for him tomorrow and he wouldn’t fucking notice.

  ‘Exactly,’ Roland said. ‘We’re talking about a journey here, not so? Concentrate please, Iona. We’ll give it another five minutes, all right?’

  ‘All right,’ Iona said. ‘It’s direction, I suppose.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now if you would care to mark in the shortest route from O to the destination…’

  Iona looked at the page. ‘It’s from where that zero thingy is, straight up,’ she said.

  ‘ “Straight up”?’ Roland said. ‘You can be more precise than that.’ He began to wonder if he’d been off his head when he’d turned down the job in North Yorkshire. He’d been a week back into the term here in Oxfordshire, on something like half the salary he might have been earning up there, and with bloody Braithwaite looming as incompetent as ever. And now, for his sins, here he was at the Morgans’ kitchen table, keeping company with unwashed supper plates and coaching Iona. Still. She was a bright kid and she’d clearly been through hell. Her father in America sounded like a certifiable case of arrested development and he had evidently done nothing to help her at all – other than dump her back on her poor old mother and stepfather once the heat was on. Roland was pretty open-eyed about the odds where it came to rehabilitating Iona educationally, but David had been quite insistent that he try. And Maya, God help her, had spent the four days since Iona’s return looking red-rimmed around the eyes. In three one-hour sessions with her, Roland had discovered that Iona knew almost nothing. Frankly, he could have got a couple of boys from his first-form Maths class to deputize for him, were it not for the outside possibility that the poor, scrambled girlie would introduce his boys to a syringe. She had no idea what a denominator was. She could not accomplish the simplest algebraic equation. She could not so much as label the axes on a graph.

  ‘Come on, Iona,’ he said. ‘Mark it in. Use the ruler. A decent straight line will help both of us to tidy your mind.’ Iona hesitated to raise her hand from where she held it clenched in her lap. She was ashamed of her fingernails in front of him. Or rather the lack of them. While she had always been a nail biter, all that carry-on with Schutzburger over the book, plus her ignominious flight back home, had meant that she had now bitten her nails so far into the quick that the flesh of the nailbeds was swollen and red. It bulged hideously over the almost extinct nails and was here and there ruptured and bleeding.

  ‘It’s OB,’ she said.

  ‘Terrific,’ Roland said. ‘Now draw it for me and mark in the arrows.’ He smiled encouragement at her and offered her his pencil. Iona took it. She picked up the ruler and joined O and B. Then she drew in the arrows. Roland watched her.

  ‘That’s excellent,’ he said, but his eyes were fixed on her nailbeds. ‘God in heaven, child,’ he said, wincing slightly. ‘You want to have the doctor look at those fingernails, you know. That a severe case of self-mutilation? Or has your Mr Angeletti had recourse to hot irons?’

  Alice had become more than eager to re-enter the Morgans’ house. After the débâcle at her parents’ home, it seemed to her that the Morgans’ warm and cluttered kitchen would be waiting to welcome her like a pair of wide-open arms. She stepped from the car upon arrival, leaving Giovanni to park and take up the baby. Then, having reassured herself that Paul Koplinski’s skip was still alive and well, she had tried the Morgans’ front-door bell and had found it to be defunct. She had waited impatiently for Giovanni to join her on the path and had once again led him down the Morgans’ unlit and obstructed side passage with intent to enter her landlord’s house by the kitchen door. She itched to see dear David again and, having observed the basement light on through the drawn curtains, she had anticipated that she would find him drinking black coffee at his kitchen table and working out his overdraft repayments in the margins of Marxism Today. What she actually found surprised and startled her, but her sense of shock was nothing compared to t
hat of poor Iona.

  Nothing could have been more unfortunate for Iona than to have Alice enter through the kitchen door at that moment in the company of Giovanni B. Angeletti; the very man she had fled America to avoid; the man who, having once lunched her in a restaurant on Broadway, had more or less ever since been after her blood. She stared in horror for a second or two at the contours of his black felt hat. Then she burst into a flood of tears and ran in panic from the room. The other three listened, suspended for a moment, until they heard the slamming of an upstairs door. Then Roland rose politely from his chair.

  ‘Alice,’ Roland said graciously. She ran to him. Tears leapt to her eyes as she embraced him and her chest heaved in one huge unbearable sob which made a sound like a saw going through wood.

  ‘There now, sweetie,’ Roland said. ‘Come on now, poppet.’ And she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and tried to compose herself for speech. Giovanni had taken off his hat. He watched them intently, from his position near the door.

  ‘R-roland,’ Alice said. ‘Y-you. I. I f-f-f-f-’

  Roland wrapped his arms more tightly around her and gave off a small, affectionate laugh. ‘Stop, take a deep breath and start all over again,’ he said.

  Alice stopped, took a deep breath and started all over again. ‘I b-b-behaved very b-badly,’ she said. ‘I’ve only just-j-just-just – I’ve only j-j-j’ She stopped. ‘I drove your car into the river, Roland. And in return you saved my life.’

  ‘Oh good Lord,’ Roland said. ‘No need to mention it, Alice.’ He held her in his arms for a moment longer and, much as he yearned to hope that she had come back to him, he knew almost immediately that she had not. She was in the company of a man. A tall, dark, rather strange-looking man who wore a pale pink jacket and carried a baby in a basket. A man who stood watching Alice with a curious, hawk-like, brooding certainty like the King of Hades with an undisputed claim; a high priest to whom there clung an aura of slightly dangerous but undeniable authority. Roland’s grief for himself was momentarily all smothered in anxiety for his little Alice as he hoped that she would be all right. But she had the look of a woman who had newly sucked on pomegranates and there was evidently nothing that he could do about it now. It passed ruefully through his mind that Whitecross’s pretty sister would possibly not quite do after all, though he had twice gone boating with her in the summer and the family had pressed him to join them for Christmas in Tuscany. He tried hard to wish that Alice had not come, but he could not.

  ‘Th-thank you,’ Alice said. And her tears flowed, persistent. ‘I’m s-s-so so terribly s-s-sorry, Roland. I’ll n-n-n. I’ll never forget you. I—’

  Roland moved firmly towards Giovanni with Alice still under his wing. He held out his hand. ‘How do you do?’ he said. ‘Roland Dent.’

  Giovanni took his hand. ‘Joe Angeletti,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

  Roland, taking note of the name, smiled ironically and thought of hot irons. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Ah yes.’

  ‘Giovanni f-f-found Jem for me,’ Alice said. ‘But she was dead.’

  ‘Oh poppet,’ Roland said. ‘Oh, believe me, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘This-this is her baby,’ Alice said. ‘I’m g-go-going to billet her here among f-filthy Marx-arxists. David s-s-s. David said I could, but I s-s-s. I think it might b-be awkward.’

  Roland smiled a bit. ‘David “cares about everybody’s family”,’ he said. ‘I should give it a try, Alice.’

  ‘Y-yes,’ Alice said. ‘B-but there’s another th-thing. I’m going to-to to to t-take instruction. W-will he mind?’

  Roland smiled again. ‘Leanings,’ he said. ‘There you are, my poppet. What did I tell you?’

  ‘Y-yes,’ Alice said. And she understood at last that what Roland had called ‘leanings’ had been the gift of grace.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Roland said. ‘But I must fly.’ He collected his jacket from the back of a chair and picked up his textbook from the table. ‘David and Maya are due back from the cinema shortly,’ he said. ‘If you would look to Iona, Alice. It’s my impression that she’s a wee bit wobbly at present.’

  ‘Y-yes,’ Alice said. ‘I will.’

  He gave her a small embrace in parting and touched Giovanni briefly on the arm.

  ‘So good to see you both,’ he said. ‘Goodnight.’ And he was gone. Alice stood with her back to Giovanni, staring fixedly into the Morgans’ sink. She heard Pamina stir faintly in the basket behind her and settle again.

  ‘Tell me about the stuttering,’ Giovanni said finally. ‘I never heard you do that before.’

  ‘Oh,’ Alice said. ‘It was always bad with Roland.’ She turned around to face him. ‘I used to have speech therapy when I was a child. With Dr Neumann. I think he was my first love.’

  ‘That man,’ Giovanni said, in a voice something sober with awe and reproach. ‘That man who just left. You gave up that man for Matthew Riley?’

  Alice reflected upon this in shame. ‘I had suffered a severe blow to the head at the time,’ she said. She brooded on it for a while. ‘Life is very dreadful, Giovanni,’ she said. ‘Life can make one very squeamish. I can’t even so much as replace Roland’s car. He’s got no money and I’m very comfortable. Yet to do so would be an affront. That car was his pride and joy, Giovanni. That car – it was the last car André Citroën designed before he died. It was exhibited at the Motor Show in 1955 – the same year that Roland’s darling parents got married. Peter Dent gave up his intended, you see. She became a nun. Then he married Roland’s mother.’

  ‘Roland’s father was affianced to a Catholic?’ Giovanni said.

  ‘Oh good Lord, no,’ Alice said. ‘He didn’t go as far as all that.’ And she left him and went upstairs to Iona.

  Iona had not slit her wrists with a Swiss Army knife. Nor had she damaged the wallpaper. But when Alice entered the bedroom, she saw that Iona was gouging out lumps of flesh from her left forearm with a pair of sharp-pointed hairdressing scissors and that the wounds were giving forth alarming gouts of blood. Iona was gibbering wretchedly that nobody loved her and Thomas and Sophie, barefooted in their nightwear, were standing side by side watching her, wide-eyed, from a distance of some four feet. William, mercifully, remained asleep.

  When Maya and David returned, the doctor was on the point of leaving. He had treated and bound up Iona’s wounds and had given her an anti-tetanus jab and a sedative which had sunk her in sleep. Alice had repaired to the adjoining room, where she was reading to Thomas from the stories of King Arthur. Sophie, meanwhile, had tiptoed downstairs and had found Giovanni in the living room with the baby. He was sitting in an armchair reading Marxism Today. Behind him on the window, facing outward on to the street, was a smallish notice whose ciphers read:

  ‘Hello,’ Sophie said. ‘I’m Sophie.’

  ‘Hello, Sophie,’ Giovanni said. ‘I’m Joe. Oughtn’t you to be in bed?’

  ‘No,’ Sophie said and she settled herself, uninvited, beside the basket near his feet. She sucked contentedly at her thumb and began to talk sweetly to the baby.

  ‘Can’t you even suck your little thumb yet, little baby?’ she said and she guided the baby’s tiny thumb tenderly into its receptive, mammalian mouth.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Giovanni said.

  ‘Why?’ Sophie said.

  ‘It’ll distort her teeth,’ Giovanni said.

  Sophie left the baby’s thumb where it was. She smiled pleasantly at Giovanni and giggled.

  ‘You’re silly,’ she said. ‘Your baby hasn’t even got any teeth.’ She did not stir when her parents came in. Neither did Giovanni. ‘This is Joe,’ she said, with an air of sanguine propriety. ‘And this is Joe’s little baby. I showed her how to suck her thumb.’ She took her own thumb out of her mouth. ‘Alice came back,’ she said serenely. ‘And Iona made holes in her arm.’ The doctor appeared in the doorway in time to catch the last of Sophie’s intelligence. Maya had gone deathly white with shock.

  ‘She’s all right, Mrs Morgan,’ said the docto
r. ‘I’ve given her a sedative.’

  Giovanni kept his eyes on Maya Morgan’s face as she questioned the doctor in her soft, anxious West Coast voice. He did not see in her that sanctimonious string-haired flower person who always brought Roland out in spots. He saw the slight, sweet-faced, rather ineptly dressed woman whom David Morgan cherished; a woman whose pale, delicate beauty, worn by sensitivity to every emotional vibration, was in danger of slipping away altogether. He wanted to shore it up; spare it from ruin. Something about her voice and her aspect reminded him of childhood and made him tender. The words dimitte nobis debita nostra etched themselves on his mind and almost reached his tongue. Then he dwelt gratefully on the blessed fact of Alice, who had been given to him over a pile of debris in his hour of greatest need. He resolved always to honour and revere her body as the temple of the blessed Mary, ever virgin, and to go out first thing in the morning and buy exquisite rosettes for her shoes. When Maya left the room with the doctor, he addressed himself to David.

  ‘I’m Joe Angeletti,’ he said. He saw that David strove politely not to groan. ‘Your daughter misled me about her age,’ he said. ‘I guess we can take it as understood that I have received my pound of flesh.’

  ‘That’s more than reasonable of you,’ David said and he sighed and sounded tired. ‘Christ knows. The silly bloody child.’

  ‘Your wife is from California,’ Giovanni said.

  ‘Yes,’ David said. ‘Yes she is.’

  Chapter 43

  Though Alice longed to have Giovanni share the attic bed with her that night, it became clear to her that he would not. Though she yearned to have him take her nipples in his mouth through an abrasive gravel of Italian biscuit crumbs, Giovanni sat determinedly in the Morgans’ living room, long after Maya and David and the children had at last gone to bed. He had exchanged his number of Marxism Today for a biography of Mozart. That was all. And there he sat, as unyielding to the innuendo of entreaty, as Mr Jackson in the house of Mrs Tittlemouse. Tiddly widdly pouff pouff puff. And I, Alice thought, with my cupboards full of thistledown. She came up and stood behind him and looked at his text over his shoulder.