Someone Lying, Someone Dying

by Burke, John

  “What was all that, at the wedding, about another job for you?”

  “Oh, that. It’d mean us moving out — going up to Newcastle.”

  “That’s the only thing against it?”

  “I’m not ready for it anyway. Too much of a gamble.”

  “What is the job?” she asked.

  Martin explained reluctantly, as though unwilling to let himself dwell on the idea for too long. “It’s a kind of preproduction parasite control. Stop pests before they start. Nothing essentially new in it, but this time they’re planning an international consortium. That’s one snag: get a lot of nations together, and they’ll be playing politics instead of getting on with the job.”

  “But the job?” she insisted. “The job in itself?”

  “Ideally it should cover all exports from Western Europe to developing countries. Research on pest problems at this end, and control of material when it gets to the other. At its simplest, imagine a big export consignment of wood proofed against parasites. All done according to a sort of European Standards Specification. Pest-proofed exports — and aftersales service on problems arising in individual countries or with individual customers. Cut down waste, destruction … and a large amount of human illness, under proper control. At the same time it would have to be done without disturbing the ecological balance.”

  “Sounds fascinating.”

  “It could be.”

  “You’d better tell me a lot more about it, so I’ll know what to think.”

  “Now?”

  “Well…”

  Their bodies were together again, and she forgot about his job and the future and the past and their parents and about all problems other than the one of how best to prolong this ecstasy.

  They loved and they lazed. They wandered through the streets of Valletta, some of the walls dazzling white and cream, others peeling and crumbling before their eyes. There was the clip-clop of horses drawing the karozzins, the muted music in some restaurants and the blare of it in a discotheque. They joined a party on a motor cruiser exploring the bays, but jibbed at the idea of water-skiing. “Too energetic,” sighed Brigid. And they laughed, and loved again.

  One day Brigid went shopping for a few trinkets. It was the first time she had been on her own. She felt frightened not so much of her surroundings or the people in the streets as of this awareness of her dependence on Martin. It was appalling. She laughed to herself and found she was hoping that it would always be the same.

  She studied a poster in a travel agency window, with a timetable in small print lying below it. When she got back to their hotel she said:

  “Did you know it’s possible to fly over to Sicily from here? To Palermo.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You mean you’ve checked, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Curiosity.”

  “If we’re both that curious…”

  “We ought to go a bit further.”

  “Just out of curiosity. I mean, we couldn’t hope to learn anything really important. But Veronica was right: it’s silly to be here and not hop over somewhere.”

  “I’ve been to the bank,” said Martin. “I’ve got the currency we’ll need.”

  “Already? You’d already decided?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s … settled, then. We do have to go.”

  “I think we do.”

  *

  Seen from above as they banked to run in, the line of the coast was a parched brown shadow on the steely blue sheen of the sea. When they landed, it was to find that the crags and splintered teeth of the hills had receded, leaving a narrow strip of level country by the sea. They were driven into Palermo through a scattering of dusty houses, a tangle of suburbs, and sudden bright boulevards.

  Tall houses leaned out over the streets. Washing flapped like banners from the tiers of iron balconies.

  Martin had booked in advance for two nights. They found themselves in a third-rate hotel, the others being full. They didn’t know how long they would be staying. Brigid’s first impulse was to turn and flee: the place was dazzling, dirty, colourful and utterly alien. She resolved not to be fanciful, but could not shrug off a sensation of lowering menace — this was, and felt like, a land of earthquakes and volcanic temperaments.

  The men eyed her as she went into the hotel. They eyed her when she and Martin sat outside a cafe. Small, dark and virile, they leaned against walls, propped their elbows on tables, and studied her. They were unsettling without ever being offensive. It was a nakedly sexual curiosity, without slyness. A dozen times she seemed to see Peter’s eyes again — greedy, appreciative, yet half-mocking.

  Martin spotted the tourist bureau first. It was closed and would not be open until the next morning. Here, if anywhere, they would know Peter Blythe, who had been a guide in Palermo before going to Rome. There was also the headquarters of the carabinieri … but somehow they were reluctant to march in there and ask awkward questions. It was a relief, in a way, that the tourist bureau was shut: it provided an excuse for waiting until tomorrow.

  They spent the evening eating, drinking, and sauntering. Small streets led down to the water, crowded with stalls and garish with naked electric light bulbs. The gutters were clogged with refuse. There was colour, and in the alleys there was darkness; there were smells and noise, and there were cars honking and blaring and nudging their way through the drifting crowds. There was no focus, no general pattern — just a swirl and shuffle of movement and noise.

  They made love that night in a room with a sagging ceiling and flaky walls. There was a faint, all-permeating smell of sweat and cooking. A fight broke out in the street below their window, and in the small hours of the morning somebody somewhat began to wail a sad, interminable song.

  In the morning they went to the tourist bureau as soon as it was open.

  The manager was an incongruously tall man with a long, sallow face and very long fingers, the joints tufted with wispy black hair. At the first few words of English he began affably to produce brochures from under the counter.

  Martin said: “We were wondering … did you ever know Peter Blythe? Or Pietro, I suppose he’d have been called here.”

  The manager tapped the counter with a sheaf of leaflets he was holding. “You come from … from where?”

  “From England. We’d like to talk to anyone who knew him.”

  “Already I answer the questions from Roma. The police — I have told them all I know. And still I do not know why. He is in trouble? He has the troubles with the English police?”

  “Not anymore,” said Martin cryptically.

  “He showed you round the island once before, maybe? Or you know him in Roma? Yes?”

  “No.”

  The manager shrugged. “Please, I do not know what you want. He is a guide, we know him, he works good. But nothing to do with me.”

  “He lived locally?”

  “Outside Palermo,” said the man, just as Peter himself had said it. “Inland. He comes from Manciano.”

  “How does one get to Manciano?”

  “But it is not a place to go. Is nothing, Manciano. Look, I show you — we have a tour starting an hour from now. Our beautiful places … historic ruins … earthquake devastation now, also. Nothing to do in Manciano. You take a trip in our coach, you see better Sicily than that.”

  “We’d like to go,” said Martin, “just to have a look round.”

  “The trip, yes?”

  “Manciano,” said Martin.

  Brigid slipped her arm through his. She felt that he was liable to start marching across the island any moment on his own two feet, and she wanted to be sure he didn’t leave her behind.

  The manager sighed and said: “The tour bus goes across the island. At an angle, so.” He half turned and drew a sketchy line with his finger across the yellowing map on the wall. “You can get off at Prizzi — here. Then it is down the road … not a good road, I am warning you … on the
way to Calascibetta.”

  “Could we hire a taxi?” asked Brigid. His smile grew patronising. “There is a man with a car.”

  “We could telephone ahead…”

  “The coach,” he said. “Sometimes it starts a little late, you know. Or there are difficulties on the road. I would be wrong, I must not tell you a time it arrives at Prizzi. Far better you go on the whole tour and come back safely, I think.”

  Martin looked at Brigid. She squeezed his arm.

  He said: “We’ll get off at Prizzi.”

  The coach was half empty. An American couple sat hunched in one of the front seats, and at the back were three elderly Germans. The other travellers appeared improbably to be peasants from the interior, using the coach as a convenient way of getting back from a brisk shopping expedition in Palermo.

  Brigid settled herself by the window and stared out.

  They bumbled across a stretch of well-cultivated land, rich with orange and lemon groves, and on through flanking acres of artichoke and potato crops. Then the coach began to climb, coughing and grumbling as it did so. It slowed through a tumbledown village where flocks of sheep and goats appeared to be having a convention.

  The hills grew steeper. On the farther slopes the sheep were like clots of dingy snow among the humped grey boulders.

  An hour went by. The sun struck in viciously, first on Brigid’s neck and then against her cheek. Her eyes were tired but she had to watch, had to see and store up everything that passed.

  At Prizzi the driver argued with them, obviously imploring them to continue on his gay sight-seeing tour. They got down and watched the bus clatter away in a cloud of grit.

  There was no car; no car that could be found by two diffident English people, anyway.

  They began to walk down the road. They had covered a hot, dusty mile or so when a donkey plodded up behind them, drawing a flamboyantly painted cart. Its driver was dark, small and withdrawn.

  His sombre face clashed absurdly with the gaiety of his cart. He said a few words, recognised their uselessness, and jerked his thumb to indicate that Brigid should ride in the cart. He made room for her, then slid down and walked stolidly beside Martin.

  Thirty minutes later they reached Manciano.

  It had been visible from some distance away. From a ragged hummock of land it peered out suspiciously over the eye-aching rise and fall of the land. On one shoulder a crumbling palace’s whiteness collapsed into brown streaks and a tangle of parched grass. The road curled and wound up to it along a spine of rock, flanked by cypresses.

  The balconies here were the shabbiest replicas of those in Palermo. There was no colour other than the hazed white and brown, providing a backdrop for men and women in black — the women in black shawls and lustreless dark dresses, many of the men in hooded capes like those of an austere religious order.

  Here, also, the men’s heads turned. They were slow and sullenly hostile rather than greedy: a woman like Brigid, they implied in every dragged-out movement, ought not to exist.

  Martin and Brigid crossed the piazza, at a loss. They had no idea where to go, whom to approach.

  Outside a bar men leaned against the wall and muttered. If they were arguing, there was no fervour in it. One younger man stood apart from the main group, twisting his hands obsessively in the sunlight.

  Brigid said: “I’m glad you’re with me.

  “I’m glad I’m with you, too. It’s habit-forming.”

  “You don’t think something awful will happen?”

  “My main worry is that nothing at all will happen. None of them look very communicative. But we’re here now, and we’re not going back empty-handed.”

  They went on, casually studying the decrepit facades as though they were trippers who could be relied on to stroll out of the far end of the town and not reappear.

  Suddenly a priest crossed the piazza, scurrying along at a speed which did not seem natural in this slumberous town of this corner of the island, Martin called out, but the priest vanished like a dark, persecuted animal into a doorway.

  They found themselves in front of a shop, the only obvious one in the square. Its window sported a few cigar packets faded by the sun, some unidentifiable bottles, a few magazines, and a row of picture postcards which even in their prime could hardly have been the most enticing propaganda for the district.

  Martin led Brigid towards the door. “Let’s start here.”

  They went in.

  The interior of the shop was stuffy, clogged with darkness after the harsh glare of the piazza. For some long seconds there was no response to the squawk of the opening door and Martin’s rap on the counter. Then a middle-aged man stooped through the low door at the back of the shop.

  Martin spoke very slowly. “I wonder if you can tell us anything about the Blythes? They used to live here.”

  The man put his head on one side, mumbled an inaudible question, and hopefully picked up a folder of black-and-white photographs.

  “The Blythes,” said Martin again. He managed to sound neither pessimistic nor aggressive. Patiently he said: “They lived here in Manciano. There would have been Serafina in the old days … and not long ago Peter, or Pietro…”

  They might just as well set about finding their way back to Palermo, thought Brigid. The sooner the better.

  The man turned and called through the open door into the room from which he had emerged. A girl’s voice answered. He stood aside to let her come out and take his place at the counter.

  She was about twenty, with raven-black hair trailing sleekly down over her shoulders. Her eyes had a deep golden tobacco glow.

  “I help you, please?”

  She was not beautiful but there was a captivating eagerness in her face. To Brigid the lilt of her voice was pure music. They had been madly optimistic and arrogant, expecting to find anyone here who could or would speak English; but they were in luck.

  Joyfully Martin said: “You speak English!”

  “I learn. A little, you know. I go to the town to learn. You wish to buy souvenir?”

  “Well, er…”

  The father was watching. Brigid nudged Martin, but it was unnecessary: he was already taking money from his pocket. Free information had to be paid for, whether they wanted picture postcards or not.

  The father made a wet, unintelligible noise with his lips. His attention did not wander for a second.

  “A couple of postcards, I think,” said Martin.

  The girl spread out six tolerably new cards over the display of magazines. As Martin was about to select one, her father groped under the counter and produced a book. He laid it proudly over one of the cards.

  It was a book about the island of Sicily and its customs, and it was written in English. From its appearance, one would assume it had been published in the nineteen-thirties and had lain here, coated with a camouflage of dust, during and after the war years. The cover had warped, and the tops of the pages were almost sepia by now.

  The girl looked embarrassed and said something in an undertone to her father. He straightened up and tapped the book with his forefinger as though to give a personal testimonial to its quality.

  “We’ll buy it,” said Martin.

  Half-ashamed, the girl handed it over to him and took coins from his outstretched palm. When she stopped, her father gave an agitated cough and snarled something at her. She snarled back. He turned away.

  “And now,” said Martin, “I wonder if you can tell us anything about the Blythes?”

  The girl glanced swiftly at her father, then lifted a creaking flap and came round the counter.

  “Pietro?” she said. “He is in trouble?”

  “Everybody always expects Pietro to be in trouble,” Martin commented.

  Brigid tried to decide from the girl’s face whether she knew a lot of secrets or was merely anxious to give them their money’s worth.

  She said: “Did you know them at all well?”

  “In Manciano, we all know. Everything
, it is known. So, the disgrace, you know. When there is the news, then so much laughter.”

  “The news?”

  “About the grand signora. She is a widow, yes, but not the … I am sorry, it is not easy for me … not the widow like she tells us. It is not true, so much.”

  “The signora?” Brigid was baffled.

  “Then comes Pietro. Always if there is bad news, it is Pietro brings it. Always if things are bad, somehow they are good for Pietro.”

  The girl spoke rapidly to her father and then led the way to the outer door. She stepped out into the sunlight, motioning Brigid and Martin to follow. They crossed a square of hot brightness and then went along a narrow alley. At the end was a smaller open space, less grand than the piazza but more graceful. One side of it was taken up entirely by the wall and ornamental railing of a single house. The house itself, almost a tiny palazzo, stood back behind a flagged courtyard. Through a gateway they could glimpse another, interior courtyard, almost Spanish in style. The building and its surroundings were in good condition, standing out from the rest of the little town with aristocratic disdain.

  “Now it is all Manciano who laughs,” said the girl. Abruptly she swung round upon Brigid, and this time the eagerness in her face was almost pathetic. “You think there is work for me in England? I come away, I work, I am not in Manciano anymore. You think?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I mean, it would depend on what you want to do.” Brigid could hardly bear the intensity of that yearning gaze.

  “I go anywhere, I do anything.”

  Martin said firmly: “This was the Blythe house?”

  “Yes.”

  The finely wrought balcony and the shutters had all been painted more recently than anything else in the neighbouring streets.

  Brigid said: “It doesn’t look as though Serafina and the rest of them were quite as humble as Peter made out. Or did we misinterpret him?”

  “If there was a phoney way of telling a thing, you may be sure … ”

  “Please?” The girl looked from one to the other, hating to miss the slightest addition to her knowledge of the language.

  Martin said: “Mrs Blythe lived here? Mrs Serafina Blythe?”