He regretted the words the moment they were out of his mouth: they sounded so heartless.
The landing-stage was almost deserted when the gondola drew up at the steps, but the aged, tottering and dirty rampino who hooked it in and held out his skinny hand for soldi, soon spread the news. While Philip was conferring with the gondoliers upon the proper course to be taken, a small crowd collected and gazed, expressionlessly but persistently, at the shapeless mound in the gondola. The rampino professed himself capable of keeping watch; the gondoliers declared they could not find a vigile unless they went together; they hinted that it might take some time. At last Dickie and Philip were free. They walked along the avenue under acacia trees stridently lighted by arc-lamps, towards the sea and the Hotel Splendide. As they looked back they saw that the little knot of spectators was already dispersing.
No, they were told: Count Giacomelli had not yet arrived. But that is nothing, smiled the maître d’hôtel; the signore Conte is often late. Would the gentlemen take a cocktail while they waited?
Dickie agreed with enthusiasm. ‘I think we’ve earned it,’ he said. ‘Think of it, but for us that poor chap would be floating about the lagoons till Doomsday and none of his dusky offspring know what had happened to him.’
‘Do you think they will now?’ asked Philip.
‘You mean . . .? Oh, I think anyone who really knew him could tell.’
They were sitting at a table under the trees. The air was fresh and pleasant; the absence of mosquitoes almost miraculous. Dickie’s spirits began to rise.
‘I say,’ he said. ‘It’s damned dull waiting. He’s twenty minutes late. Where’s that boy?’
When a second round had been served, Dickie motioned the page to stay. Philip looked at him in surprise.
‘Listen,’ said Dickie, in a thick, excited undertone. ‘Wouldn’t it be a lark if we sent this lad down to the gondola and told him to ask the chap that’s resting inside to come and dine with us?’
‘A charming idea, Dickie, but I doubt whether they understand practical jokes in this country.’
‘Nonsense, Phil, that’s a joke that anyone could understand. Now, put on your thinking-cap and find the appropriate words. I’m no good; you must do it.’
Philip smiled.
‘We don’t want to be four at dinner, do we? I’m sure the Count wouldn’t like having to sit down with a—a drowned rat.’
‘That’s absurd; he may be a man of excellent family; it’s generally the rich who commit suicide.’
‘We don’t know that he did.’
‘No, but all that’s beside the point. Now just tell this boy to run down to the jetty, or whatever it is called, give our message and bring us back the answer. It won’t take him ten minutes. I’ll give him five lire to soothe his shattered nerves.’
Philip appeared to be considering it. ‘Dick, I really don’t think—a foreign country and all, you know. . . .’
The boy looked interrogatively from one to the other.
‘It’s a good idea,’ repeated Philip, ‘and I don’t want to be a spoilsport. But really, Dickie, I should give it up. The boy would be very scared, perhaps tell his parents, and then we might be mobbed and thrown into the Canal. It’s the kind of thing that gives us a bad name abroad,’ he concluded, somewhat pompously.
Dickie rose unsteadily to his feet.
‘Bad name be hanged!’ he said. ‘What does it matter what we do in this tuppenny ha’penny hole? If you won’t tell the boy I’ll arrange it with the concierge. He understands English.’
‘All right,’ agreed Philip, for Dickie was already lurching away, the light of battle in his eye. ‘I don’t expect it’d do any harm, really. Senta piccolo!’ He began to explain the errand.
‘Don’t forget,’ admonished Dickie, ‘we expect the gentleman subito. He needn’t bother to dress or wash or brush up or anything.’
Philip smiled in spite of himself.
‘Dica al signore,’ he said, ‘di non vestirsi nero.’
‘Not “smoking”?’ said the boy, pertly, delighted to display his English.
‘No, not “smoking”.’
The boy was off like a streak.
It must be boring waiting for a bomb to go off; it is almost equally tedious waiting for a practical joke to take effect. Dickie and Philip found the minutes drag interminably and they could think of nothing to say. ‘He must be there now,’ said Dickie, at last, taking out watch.
‘What’s the time?’
‘Half-past eight. He’s been gone seven minutes.’
‘How dark it is,’ said Philip. ‘Partly the trees, I suppose. But it wouldn’t be dark in England now.’
‘I’ve told you, much better stick to the Old Country. More daylight, fewer corpses, guests turn up to dinner at the proper time. . . .
‘Giacomelli’s certainly very late. Over half an hour.’
‘I wonder if he ever got your message.’
‘Oh yes, he answered it.’
‘You never told me. How long ago was that?’
‘Last Wednesday. I wanted to give him plenty of time.’
‘Did he write?’
‘No, he telephoned. I couldn’t understand very well. The servant said the Count was away but he would be delighted to dine with us. He was sorry he couldn’t write, but he had been called away on business.’
‘The sugar factory, perhaps?’
‘Very likely.’
‘It’s bloody quiet, as the navvy said,’ remarked Dickie.
‘Yes, they are all dining in that glass place. You can see it through leaves.’
‘I suppose they’ll know to bring him here.’
‘Oh, yes.’
Silence fell, broken a moment later by Philip’s exclamation, ‘Ah, here’s the boy!’
With no little excitement they watched his small figure approaching over the wilderness of small grey pebbles which serve the Venetians in lieu of gravel. They noticed at once that his bearing was erect and important; if he had had a shock he bore no traces of it. He stopped by them, smiling and breathing hard.
‘Ho fatto un corso,’ he said, swelling with pride.
‘What’s that?’
‘He says he ran.’
‘I expect he did.’
The friends exchanged amused glances.
‘I must say he’s got a good pluck,’ remarked Dickie, ruefully admiring. Their joke had fallen flat. ‘But I expect these Italian kids see corpses every day. Anyhow, ask him what the gentleman said.’
‘Che cosa ha detto il signore?’ asked Philip.
Still panting, the boy replied:
‘Accetta con molto piacere. Fra pochi minuti sarà qui.’
Philip stared at the page in amazement.
Si, si, signore,’ repeated the boy. ‘Cosi ha detto, “vengo con molto piacere” ’.
‘What does he say?’ asked Dickie irritably.
‘He says that the gentleman accepts our invitation with great pleasure and will be here in a few minutes.’
‘Of course,’ said Dickie, when the boy had gone off with his mancia, whistling, ‘he’s having us on. But he’s a tough youngster. Can’t be more than twelve years old.’
Philip was looking all round him, clenching and unclenching his fingers.
‘I don’t believe he invented that.’
‘But if he didn’t?’
Philip did not answer.
‘How like a cemetery the place looks,’ he said, suddenly, ‘with all the cypresses and this horrible monumental mason’s road-repairing stuff all round.’
‘The scene would look better for a few fairy-lights,’ rejoined Dickie. ‘But your morbid fancies don’t help us to solve the problem of our friend in the boat. Are we being made fools of by this whippersnapper, or are we not?’
‘Time will show,’ said Philip. ‘He said a few minutes.’
They both sat listening.
‘This waiting gives me the jim-jams,’ said Dickie at last. ‘Let’s call the little rasca
l back and make him tell us what really did happen.’
‘No, no, Dickie, that would be too mortifying. Let’s try to think it out; let’s proceed from the known to the unknown, as they do in detective stories. The boy goes off. He arrives at the landing stage. He finds some ghoulish loafers hanging about. . . .’
‘He might not,’ said Dickie. ‘There were only two or three corpse-gazers when we left.’
‘Anyhow, he finds the rampino who swore to mount guard.’
‘He might have slipped in for a drink,’ said Dickie. ‘You gave him the wherewithal, and he has to live like others.’
‘Well, in that case, the boy would see—what?’
‘Just that bit of tarpaulin stuff, humped up in the middle.’
‘What would he do, then? Put yourself in his place, Dickie.’
Dickie grimaced slightly.
‘I suppose he’d think the man was resting under the water-proof and he’d say, “Hullo, there!” in that ear-splitting voice Italians have, fit to wake. . . .’
‘Yes, yes. And then?’
‘Then perhaps, as he seems an enterprising child, he’d descend into the hold and give the tarpaulin a tweak and—well, I suppose he’d stop shouting,’ concluded Dickie lamely. ‘He’d see it was no good. You must own,’ he added, ‘it’s simpler to assume that half way down the street he met a pal who told him he was being ragged: then he hung about and smoked a cigarette and returned puffing with this cock-and-bull story—simply to get his own back on us.’
‘That is the most rational explanation,’ said Philip. ‘But just for fun, let’s suppose that when he called, the tarpaulin began to move and rear itself up and a hand came round the edge, and——’
There was a sound of feet scrunching on the stones, and the friends heard a respectful voice saying, ‘Per qui, signor Conte.’
At first they could only see the robust, white-waistcoated figure of the concierge advancing with a large air and steam-roller tread; behind him they presently descried another figure, a tall man dressed in dark clothes, who walked with a limp. After the concierge’s glorious effulgence, he seemed almost invisible.
‘Il Conte Giacomelli,’ announced the concierge, impressively.
The two Englishmen advanced with outstretched hands, but their guest fell back half a pace and raised his arm in the Roman salute.
‘How do you do?’ he said. His English accent was excellent. ‘I’m afraid I am a little late, no?’
‘Just a minute or two, perhaps,’ said Philip. ‘Nothing to speak of.’ Furtively, he stared at the Count. A branch of the overhanging ilex tree nearly touched his hat; he stood so straight and still in the darkness that one could fancy he was suspended from the tree.
‘To tell you the truth,’ said Dickie bluntly, ‘we had almost given you up.’
‘Given me up?’ The Count seemed mystified. ‘How do you mean, given me up?’
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ Philip laughingly reassured him. ‘He didn’t mean give you up to the police. To give up, you know, can mean so many things. That’s the worst of our language.’
‘You can give up hope, isn’t it?’ inquired the Count.
‘Yes,’ replied Philip cheerfully. ‘You can certainly give up hope. That’s what my friend meant: we’d almost given up hope of seeing you. We couldn’t give you up—that’s only an idiom—because, you see, we hadn’t got you.’
‘I see,’ said the Count. ‘You hadn’t got me.’ He pondered.
The silence was broken by Dickie.
‘You may be a good grammarian, Phil,’ he said, ‘but you’re a damned bad host. The Count must be famished. Let’s have some cocktails here and then go in to dinner.’
‘All right, you order them. I hope you don’t mind,’ he went on when Dickie had gone, ‘but we may be four at dinner.’
‘Four?’ echoed the Count.
‘I mean,’ said Philip, finding it absurdly difficult to explain, ‘we asked someone else as well. I—I think he’s coming.’
‘But that will be delightful,’ the Count said, raising his eyebrows slightly. “Why should I mind? Perhaps he is a friend of mine, too—your—your other guest?’
‘I don’t think he would be,’ said Philip, feeling more than ever at a loss. ‘He—he . . .’
‘He is not de notre monde, perhaps?’ the Count suggested, indulgently.
Philip knew that foreigners refer to distinctions of class more openly than we do, but all the same, he found it very difficult to reply.
‘I don’t know whether he belongs to our world or not,’ he began, and realizing the ludicrous appropriateness of the words, stopped suddenly. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I can’t imagine why my friend is staying so long. Shall we sit down? Take care!’ he cried as the Count was moving towards a chair. ‘It’s got a game leg—it won’t hold you.’
He spoke too late; the Count had already seated himself. Smiling, he said: ‘You see, she carries me all right.’
Philip marvelled.
‘You must be a magician.’
The Count shook his head. ‘No, not a magician, a—a . . .,’ he searched for the word. ‘I cannot explain myself in English. Your friend who is corning—does he speak Italian?’ Inwardly Philip groaned. ‘I—I really don’t know.’ The Count tilted his chair back.
‘I don’t want to be curious, but is he an Englishman, your friend?’
Oh God, thought Philip. Why on earth did I start this subject?
Aloud he said: ‘To tell you the truth I don’t know much about him.
That’s what I wanted to explain to you. We only saw him once and
we invited him through a third person.’
‘As you did me?’ said the Count, smiling.
‘Yes, yes, but the circumstances were different. We came on him by accident and gave him a lift.’
‘A lift?’ queried the Count. ‘You were in a hotel, perhaps?’
‘No,’ said Philip, laughing awkwardly. ‘We gave him a lift—a ride—in the gondola. How did you come?’ he added, thankful at last to have changed the subject.
‘I was given a lift, too,’ said the Count. ‘In a gondola?’
‘Yes, in a gondola.’
‘What an odd coincidence,’ said Philip.
‘So, you see,’ said the Count, ‘your friend and I will have a good deal in common.’
There was a pause. Philip felt a growing uneasiness which he couldn’t define or account for. He wished Dickie would come back: he would be able to divert the conversation into pleasanter channels. He heard the Count’s voice saying:
‘I’m glad you told me about your friend. I always like to know something about a person before I make his acquaintance.’
Philip felt he must make an end of all this. ‘Oh, but I don’t think you will make his acquaintance,’ he cried. ‘You see, I don’t think he exists. It’s all a silly joke.’
‘A joke?’ asked the Count.
‘Yes, a practical joke. Don’t you in Italy have a game on the first of April making people believe or do silly things ? April Fools, we call them.’
‘Yes, we have that custom,’ said the Count, gravely, ‘only we call them pesci d’Aprile—April Fish.’
‘Ah,’ said Philip, ‘that’s because you are a nation of fishermen. An April fish is a kind of fish you don’t expect—something you pull out of the water and——’
‘What’s that?’ said the Count. ‘I heard a voice.’
Philip listened.
‘Perhaps it’s your other guest.’
‘It can’t be him. It can’t be!’
The sound was repeated: it was only just audible, but it was Philip’s name. But why did Dickie call so softly?
‘Will you excuse me?’ said Philip. ‘I think I’m wanted.’
The Count inclined his head.
‘But it’s the most amazing thing,’ Dickie was saying, ‘I think I must have got it all wrong. But here they are and perhaps you will be able to convince them. I think they’re mad myself—
I told them so.’
He led Philip into the hall of the hotel. The concierge was there and two vigili. They were talking in whispers.
‘Ma è scritto sul fazzoletto,’ one of them was saying.
‘What’s that?’ asked Dickie.
‘He says it’s written on his handkerchief said Philip.
‘Besides, we both know him,’ chimed in the other policeman.
‘What is this all about?’ cried Philip. ‘Know whom?’
‘Il Conte Giacomelli,’ chanted the vigili in chorus.
‘Well, do you want him?’ asked Philip.
‘We did want him three days ago,’ said one of the men. ‘But now it’s too late.’
‘Too late? But he’s . . .’ Philip stopped suddenly and looked across at Dickie.
‘I tell them so,’ shouted the concierge, who seemed in no way disposed to save Count Giacomelli from the hands of justice. ‘Many times, many times, I say: “The Count is in the garden with the English gentlemen.” But they do not believe me.’
‘But it’s true!’ cried Philip. ‘I’ve only just left him. What do the vigili say?’
‘They say that he is dead,’ said the concierge. ‘They say he is dead and his body is in your boat.’
There was a moment of silence. The vigili, like men exhausted by argument, stood apart, moody and indifferent. At last one of them spoke.
‘It is true, signori. Si è suicidato. His affairs went badly. He was a great swindler—and knew he would be arrested and condemned. Cosi si è salvato.’
‘He may be a swindler,’ said Philip, ‘but I’m certain he’s alive. Come into the garden and see.’
Shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders, the vigili followed him out of the hotel. In a small group they trooped across the stony waste towards the tree. There was no one there.
‘You see, signori’ said one of the vigili, with an air of subdued triumph, ‘it’s as we said.’
‘Well, he must have gone away,’ said Philip, obstinately. ‘He was sitting on this chair—so. . . .’ But his effort to give point to his contention failed. The chair gave way under him and he sprawled rather ludicrously and painfully on the stony floor. When he had picked himself up one of the policemen took the chair, ran his hand over it, and remarked:
The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley Page 12