by Francis King
Bob appeared, in his usual grubby khaki shorts, aertex shirt and gym shoes.
‘How about a walk?’
‘Where to?’
‘Round the lake. Or up into the hills. Where else?’
‘Oh, it’s too hot. Besides, I want to read this.’ I held up the magazine.
‘Boring!’
‘Not at all. I find Nature boring. We’re different, that’s all.’
‘They’ve gone off. In the car.’ Only much later did I detect something conspiratorial in the way he said it.
‘Where to?’
‘Oh, to visit those friends. What are they called? The ones with the garden and the Siamese cat.’
‘Tracey.’
‘Tracey. That’s right. The One and Only had a letter from the Platz creature this morning,’ he added.
‘How do you know?’
‘I’ve just peeped into his room.’
‘Oh, you haven’t! You really are a most terrible little sneak.’
‘And you’re a most terrible little prig.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t you want to know what was in it?’
‘In what?’
‘The letter, idiot.’
‘No, not really.’
‘It was a love-letter, really. Disgusting! It was full of promises as love-letters so often are. Not just promises of undying devotion but promises to do all kinds of wonderful things for Tim.’
‘Ma had better not know about it.’
‘No. It would send her berserk.’ He laughed. ‘But perhaps that’s a reason for letting her know about it. The berserker, the better!’
I returned to my reading, while he stood beside me, gazing down towards the lake. ‘I used to think that lake beautiful,’ he eventually sighed. ‘But now it only bores me. I really can’t wait to get back to England.’
‘Thanks!’
‘No, I don’t really mean that. That must have sounded ungrateful. It’s far more fun being here than in Bexhill, I can tell you.’
When he had gone, I tried to concentrate on what I was reading about Burmese glass. But I could not do so. The original virus or the spore – however one looks at it – was beginning to proliferate.
Perhaps Dr Unwin was right when, years later, he speculated about the possibility of demonic possession. Perhaps, when Bob had possessed me on those two occasions in my bedroom, he had possessed more than my body. We had joked together about killing Ma, and it had all been a game – ‘I know – we could push her down the stairs,’ ‘No, no, much better to push her out of her bedroom window, so that it appeared to be suicide,’ ‘Or down those steps in the garden,’ that kind of thing. But now I was beginning seriously to think of killing her.
That previous night I had dreamed of Dad. I was looking up at his swollen, purple face, then down at his feet, the shoes off, the thick woollen socks rucked about his ankles, as he dangled from his Coldstream tie. Then, all at once he was saying to me, in that flat, monochrome voice, which always indicated that he had entered one of his depressions: ‘Please, please, beg your mother to come and see me.’
I could not now stop thinking of him. ‘It’s a dog’s life,’ he had often said to me, sometimes with a sigh but more often with a smile. His had been a dog’s life, largely because of that bitch.
What right had she to live when he was dead?
I had begun to reread the article on Burmese glass, when all at once I heard a distant sound, like a muffled explosion. I hurried to the railings separating the terrace from the precipitous slope below it, and peered down. Why did that sound have that effect on me? Why did my head seem like a balloon on the point of bursting? Why did I feel such an extraordinary mixture of elation and dread? After all, it could merely have been the sound either of quarrying up in the mountains or of blasting to widen the perilously narrow road round the lake. Both were familiar. Had I guessed that something had happened? Had I had some premonition?
I waited there for minutes on end. Then I heard the sirens wailing in the distance. Two black police cars shot into view, lurched round a corner of the road, and disappeared from sight. An ambulance followed more sedately. After that, an eerie silence.
I returned to my deck-chair, I tried to read. But I could not do so. I wanted to descend the hill, race round the lake, discover what had happened.
A long time later, I heard a car approaching. Again I went to the railings of the terrace. It was one of the black police cars, screeching round one hairpin bend after another.
I ran out into the drive. Tim stepped out of the police car, staggered, would have fallen but for the hand which a policeman put out to support him. His face was extraordinarily pale. There was some dried blood caked round one of his nostrils.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘ What’s happened? Where’s Ma?’
The three policemen were all talking simultaneously in loud, ringing voices.
‘I’m all right. I had a bash on the nose, but I’m all right.’
‘Where’s Ma?’ I repeated. I must have sounded concerned for her safety; but there was only one answer which I really wanted and expected.
‘They’ve taken her to the hospital in Como. They’re going to X-ray her arm. But they think nothing’s broken. Only a sprain and bruising.’
I hurtled down into an abyss of disappointment.
‘Why aren’t you with her?’ I wanted to ask; and, as though I had indeed put the question, he said: ‘The ambulance men told me it was best if I got back here. They said I was in shock. I passed out by the roadside. Rather embarrassing.’
He began to limp into the house.
‘What happened?’
‘Brakes failed. Just wouldn’t respond. That bloody car! Fortunately we were not on the lake side of the road. But in order to avoid an oncoming bus, I had to drive into the gate of one of the villas. The only trouble was that I drove into not only the gate but into the wall as well. That car’s a write-off,’ he added. ‘It’s a miracle we both weren’t a write-off too,’ He put a hand up to his mouth. ‘Oh, God, I’m going to be sick!’ At that, he rushed to the lavatory.
Suddenly I realised that Bob was standing behind me. I spun round, we stared at each other. Then he grinned.
‘Pity,’ he said. ‘If they’d been fifty yards further on, they’d have gone wham bang into the rock-face.’
Later, much later, after I had gone over to the hospital to see how Ma was, and after I had brought her home in a taxi and after she had screamed at Tim for ‘ leaving me to my fate, just leaving me, thinking only of yourself’, I said to Bob: ‘ Tell me the truth, Bob. Did you do anything to that car?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Did you?’
I now wanted him to say: ‘Yes, of course, I tampered with the brakes.’ If he said that, I should be in no way shocked. I should only be profoundly grateful to him, I should only love him all the more.
But he merely repeated: ‘What do you think?’ Then he gave that impudent smile of his. ‘Thoughts have power. Dreams have power. Wishes have power.’
Chapter Thirty Three
I woke in the middle of the night, consumed by anger as by a raging fire. Once already he had ruined my life, now he was set on ruining it again. What was the source of his malevolence? What had I ever done to harm him? Although, with a high wind rattling the window frame, the night was cool, I felt the sweat breaking out on my forehead, under my armpits, between my buttocks. I threw off the blanket, I groaned aloud. From the next-door room – I always leave both her and my door open, in case she needs me – I heard Noreen call out something. But when I called back: ‘Noreen! Is something the matter?’, I got the sleep-clogged answer: ‘All right. Everything all right.’
Now, as I sit in the shop expecting, as I so often do during this period of recession, a customer who never comes, I ask myself yet again: What are you waiting for? Why don’t you go and see him? Or, if you don’t go to see him, why don’t you write to him? You have his address, you know his village, it would be easy to drive from here to there
and back in a single morning or a single afternoon. It would be even easier to pick up a pen.
I am afraid of something, that’s it. But of what? Of him? Or of myself?
A young girl, trailing a child, comes in. She looks at me and her pretty, open face freezes into concern – or is it alarm?
‘Have I caught you at a bad time?’ she asks.
If I were truthful, I should answer: ‘Yes, a very bad time. At the moment all times are bad.’ But I get up from my chair and advance towards her smiling. ‘No, no. I’ve all the time in the world. What can I do to help you?’
‘Well, actually – I don’t actually – I don’t actually want to buy anything. I, er, actually, want to sell something.’ She puts a hand into the pocket of her pinafore dress.
These days they all want to sell something.
Chapter Thirty Four
Our last five or six days in Bellagio were surprisingly peaceful ones.
Tim lavished all his attention on Ma, either through guilt for his behaviour at the accident or through fear that that behaviour might have turned her against him. Supine on the chaise-longue in the sitting-room, she would jerk her right arm out of its sling, with a wince of pain (why could she not use her left arm, I often wondered), preparatory to reaching for a cigarette in the silver box on the table beside her; and at once he would leap to his feet, pull out the gold cigarette case (Fabergé, he had boasted to me one evening when we were alone together) and a gold cigarette lighter which she had also given to him, and then ask: ‘Shall I light one for you, darling?’ Stooping, he would place the lit cigarette between her lips and then give her a passing kiss on her cheek or her forehead.
Before, when she prattled on and on, becoming more and more inconsequential and silly as she gulped more and more gin, he would pick up the newspaper and begin ostentatiously to read. ‘Are you listening to me, Tim?’ she would eventually demand, for him to reply airily: ‘Yes, yes, I’m taking in every word.’ Now this no longer happened. Legs outstretched and hands clasped in his lap, he would gaze steadfastly at her, nod, put his head on one side and give an amused or understanding smile, would exclaim: ‘Oh, really!’, ‘How amazing!’, ‘Oh, that’s unbelievable!’
Ma loved all this attention: if the pain of the arm was the price, then it was clearly worth it. ‘Oh, Tim, what a faithful friend you are!’ she would tell him. ‘ What would I do without you? The One and Only!’ To me she would say: ‘Isn’t he a darling?’ or ‘ What have I done to deserve so much attention?’
In contrast, Bob was perfunctory on all those occasions when, in Tim’s absence, Ma asked him to do something. ‘ Would you be an angel and fetch my book for me from my room?’ she asked him after dinner one evening. He pulled a face, which must have been visible to her, sighed and made for the door. ‘Hatter’s Castle,’ she called out after him. When he returned with the book, he chucked it across to her with a flick of the wrist, so that it landed in her lap. ‘How can you bear to read such tripe?’ he asked. Ma bridled: ‘Tripe? It’s not tripe at all. It’s a serious novel. It had a very good crit in The Observer.’ Bob gave a loud, derisive laugh.
It was soon after that that he said to me: ‘Your mother is milking her bad arm for all it’s worth, isn’t she? For God’s sake, it isn’t broken. I don’t believe for one moment that she really needs that sling,’ Then he grinned: ‘I’d really like to give her a reason for wearing it. In fact, I’d like to break both her arms.’
On the day before our departure, Ma and Tim paid another visit to Como, this time by hired car. They did not suggest that Bob and I should go too.
After we had seen them off, I said: ‘It was mean of Ma not to take us!’
‘Who wants to trail round with them? That’s a deadly town anyway. Now we’re free to do exactly what we want. Come on!’ He began to race up the stairs, then halted, since I was not following. ‘Come on!’ Reluctantly I began to walk up the stairs. What could he be planning?
He turned the handle of the door to Ma’s room, opened it and beckoned to me.
‘No, Bob! No! We mustn’t go in there.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a cretin! Why shouldn’t we? Come on.’
Such was the force of his will that, dragging step by step, I at last ventured into the room behind him.
He began to pull out drawers, at one moment brandishing a brassière and at another a pair of black silk knickers, rimmed with lace. He held something aloft. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked.
I peered at the object, shook my head.
‘A diaphragm, idiot!’
I was none the wiser.
‘Don’t you know what a diaphragm is? It’s what’s called ‘‘a contraceptive device’’.’ How did he know that? He chucked the diaphragm back into its drawer and then, from the same drawer, produced a large tube. He studied the label. He whistled. He pushed the tube at me. ‘Ever seen a contraceptive jelly? I bet you haven’t. Now why on earth should that old bitch be worrying so much about contraception? She must be years past it. Perhaps it’s just her way of making Tim think she’s younger than she is.’
Systematically he examined all Ma’s possessions – her dresses, her innumerable pairs of shoes, her medicines and perfumes – while I looked on, at once excited and appalled. I had never indulged in such a scrutiny; I had never even entered her bedroom unless she was there.
Having gone through some letters written by Tim – ‘ the ass is barely literate’ – Bob collapsed on to Ma’s bed. Once, twice, he bounced on it. ‘This bed is far more comfortable than my bed upstairs. Or yours. And far bigger. Try it!’
I hesitated.
‘Oh, come on! Come on!’
I clambered on to the high bed. My heart was thumping. It was as though a huge drum were being beaten inside me. Then he rolled over towards me, put his arms round me, gripped me ferociously.
For a few seconds I tried to struggle free, kicking him on a shin. Then, with a feeling of extraordinary happiness and desolation, the one an integral part of the other, I gave in yet again.
Afterwards, I was terrified that Ma would realise that we had violated not merely her room but her bed. Frantically I pulled at the sheets, patted the pillows. ‘Oh, stop that!’ Bob said, watching me from a chair. ‘She won’t notice a thing. She’s the least observant woman I know.’
He was right. Ma noticed nothing.
‘So what have you two been doing in our absence?’ she asked us.
‘Boring each other,’ Bob replied.
‘Why don’t you ever go out? You could sit around chatting and reading just as well in England.’
‘We often go out,’ Bob said. ‘You just never notice.’
Ma and Tim had returned laden with purchases. ‘We’ve been terribly extravagant,’ she said. What she meant was ‘ I’. ‘Tim couldn’t resist the most beautiful cashmere overcoat, perfect for the autumn in London, and I bought myself two evening dresses in a little shop which Tim, not I, noticed. Show them the shoes, Tim!’ she commanded. ‘ You must see his new shoes.’
Delighted to do so, Tim opened the box. The shoes were of suede.
‘My father says that no gentleman ever wears suede shoes,’ Bob remarked, having glanced at them.
‘What nonsense!’ Ma exclaimed indignantly. ‘I’ve never heard such nonsense. Your father must have been born in the Dark Ages.’
‘Well, yes, he was born an awfully long time ago,’ Bob admitted.
Looking back now on those weeks in Bellagio, I see that, like some fever which mysteriously ebbs from the patient and then sweeps back to him in an even more virulent form, my hatred of Ma constantly fluctuated. There were times when I even thought of her with admiration and, yes, tenderness.
One of her ‘ good’ days – that was how I thought of those occasions when it seemed as though the sun had all at once, after many weeks, broken through a lowering sky – occurred after the gardener, who also worked next door, told us that one of the two elderly women neighbours was about to have her seve
ntieth birthday. Ma had so often referred to them derisively as ‘the devil’s dykes’ or ‘those two Wells of Loneliness’. Now, however, she decided that she must ‘ do something for them’. Over the wall, she asked them if they would like to come to tea on the day which she now knew to be that of the birthday. At first surprised and reluctant, then gratified, they accepted.
An excellent cook, although she could rarely be bothered to do any cooking, Ma supervised Maria in the baking of a cake and herself saw to its elaborate icing. There was a moment of fury when Tim tactlessly pointed out that ‘compleanno’, the Italian word for ‘birthday’, already inscribed in pink lettering, should have been spelled with two n’s, not one, but Ma was pacified when he told her that the cake was ‘a masterpiece, a little masterpiece’.
The women, both wearing brown lace dresses reaching almost to their ankles and smelling strongly of eau-de-Cologne, were amazed that Ma should have learned of the birthday and delighted that she should have done something about it. Ma could not have been more charming and gracious, as she pressed cucumber sandwiches on them – ‘ No English tea is a real English tea without cucumber sandwiches’ – congratulated them on their English, and listened attentively as they spoke of their work for animal welfare in the district.
When the women had gone, I had to tell her: ‘You were wonderful!’
She laughed. ‘Aren’t I always wonderful?’
How could I truthfully answer that question?
I said nothing.
Another of Ma’s ‘good’ days occurred when, lifting the heavy aluminium kettle off the range, Violetta slipped and scalded her knee. At a shriek, not from the girl but from her mother, Ma raced into the kitchen. ‘ Oh, you poor darling!’ I heard her cry out. Then she switched to Italian: ‘Ah, poveretta; poveretta!’ She grabbed a dishcloth and a bottle of olive oil – by now I had joined her – and in no time at all was smearing the oil over the scalded knee. ‘Tim!’ she called. ‘ Tim! We must get poor little Violetta down to the hospital as quickly as possible!’ Her former jealousy over Tim’s interest in the girl seemed to have been forgotten; she was genuinely concerned, I was sure. She put an arm round Violetta and began to support her to the front door.