by Jon Cleary
‘Oh God, aren’t they marvellous!’
She’s all right, thought Margaret. While she responds like that to men cheering her, she’s not going to look at any girls. She bent and kissed Sally. ‘Good luck, darling. Come back safely.’
‘Holy Jesus, I wish I were coming with you!’ Nina shouted above the noise of the crowd. ‘Tell Angelo to get out and I’ll take his place!’
‘Drunk on two Camparis,’ said Margaret, dragging her away.
‘No,’ Nina waltzed along the edge of the crowd. Margaret had not seen her so gay since … Since Tim had gone away. ‘Drunk on Italy!’
They went up to the apartment, went out on to the balcony with their parents, saw Sally bring the green Maserati up under the glare of lights on the starting ramp. Sally looked across towards them, but they knew she couldn’t see them. They saw a gloved hand wave, then the car rolled down the ramp, there was a screech of tyres as it accelerated, then it was heading down the Viale Rebuffone between the creek-banks of people. It disappeared into the dark morning and Margaret turned away to follow Nina and her parents back into the apartment.
Then she saw the red Ferrari already on the ramp, crouched there like an animal of prey. Then it slid down the ramp and went in a thunder of exhaust down the long road to Rome after Sally.
4
Sally was unplaced in her class in the Mille Miglia but she did finish. Philip Gentleman, or Mann, was not so fortunate. He went off the road coming down out of the Radicofani Pass north of Viterbo and was taken to hospital. Margaret read about his crash in the newspapers and wondered if she should send him a sympathy note; then decided against it and put him out of her mind. Sally sent him fruit and magazines, but did not go to see him in hospital.
Lucas and Edith, satisfied now that Sally was safe, satisfied also with their three daughters now they had spent a happy month with them, went home to Kansas City. As soon as her parents were on the plane for home Sally announced she was entering the Le Mans Twenty-Four-Hours race in France.
‘Like hell you are,’ said Nina and Margaret agreed with her. ‘We promised Mother we’d keep an eye on you and we’re going to.’
‘You can come to Le Mans and keep an eye on me for the whole twenty-four hours.’
‘No,’ said Margaret flatly. ‘I don’t know anything about motor racing, but I’m sure you’re not experienced enough for that one. Anyhow, I don’t think they’d accept you. Try something else, if you must keep racing.’
Sally argued, but her sisters were adamant. In the end she accepted their decision and did not seem to resent it. The argument, which went on for several days, never got heated; indeed, it seemed to deepen the relationship among the three girls. Without actually being able to put her finger on it, Margaret became aware of a growing interdependence among the three of them. Never stated openly, it was as if each of them was coming to realize that she needed the other two, that there was a link binding them which, back home, they had never noticed because they had taken it for granted.
So Sally went in for rallies, travelling all over Europe to compete in them. Margaret and Nina became part of the social life of Rome. The Italian film industry was now off its knees, having given up making films about partisans and bicycle thieves; it was standing up and looking around before heading off in the same direction as American and British films. It had discovered the box-office value of bosoms, and film posters now looked like advertisements for over-developed glands. Audiences flocked to see Silvano Mangano, Elena Drago Rossi and the new girl Gina Lollobrigida; and the young men stamped their feet and whisded just as the youths in Tulsa or Leeds or Melbourne did when Jane Russell or Marilyn Monroe swung their personalities across the screen. Rome had at last shoved the late war to the back of its mind and, aided by its growing film industry, started to become a social centre to rival Paris and London. It would not reach its peak till the Sixties, but the Beaufort sisters would always be remembered as among the foundation members.
The sisters did not go home for the summer; instead they promised their parents faithfully to go home for Christmas. One night in late summer they threw a party for two hundred guests at the villa. It was an extravaganza, the sort of social event that made good anti-capitalist propaganda in L’Unita, but was run as a spread in Life magazine as an example of how Europe was at last beginning to enjoy itself. The guest list ranged over expatriate Americans, impoverished Italian aristocrats, homosexual English aristocrats, a go-getting Hungarian aristocrat, assorted diplomats, film stars, racing drivers and such clergy from the Vatican as could persuade themselves that staying up late would not merit purgatory, excommunication or being featured in tomorrow’s L’Unita. The garden was hung with coloured lights, a board floor was put down for dancing, a toga-dressed band played in a scaled-down model of the Forum. Everyone except the clergy came in fancy dress. Some of the women’s dress was so fancy that one or two of the clergymen, years ahead of the anti-celibacy movement, wondered why sin was so bad.
Margaret thought it was all vulgar and in dreadful taste and loved every moment and spangle of it. She was dressed as Dolley Madison, Nina was Nell Gwynne and Sally was Annie Oakley, an unlikely trio of sisters. Half-way through the evening a slim Nero appeared beside Dolley Madison.
‘I can’t remember you being on the guest list,’ she said.
‘I came with a friend,’ said Philip Gentleman. ‘That’s her over there. The Venetian Doge who’s trying to get the monsignor to reverse his collar.’
‘I thought Doges were male.’
‘That wouldn’t worry Michele. She’s a very versatile actress. No talent but versatile.’
Margaret looked across at the actress with feigned interest, while she wondered if she was glad to see him or not. ‘Are you down from Milan just for the night?’
‘I’m living in Rome now. We’re putting money into the Italian film business.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘My father and his partners.’
‘Do the locals know who they are?’
‘No. I don’t think they’d care even if they did know. In the film industry money is money, Mrs Minett. It is in any business, if you really cared to look into it. Your husband understood that. I was sorry to hear about his death.’
She changed the subject quickly. ‘I’m glad to see you recovered from your accident. Are you still racing?’
‘No. I’m afraid my father doesn’t like the idea of his only son taking too many risks.’
Another protected one. ‘Do I go on calling you Mr Mann?’
‘If you have to be formal, yes. But I’d prefer Philip.’
‘Do you want me to tell my sisters who you really are?’
‘That’s up to you.’ He seemed unworried, a Nero who would turn his back on Rome burning. ‘But it might be awkward for you.’
Then Sally, in fringed buckskin, swept up to them. ‘I thought it was you! Who are you supposed to be?’
Nero looked at his fiddle. ‘Jack Benny?’
‘Are you still racing?’
Margaret left them and moved on through the crowd. The Venetian Doge had forsaken the Vatican monsignor and was talking to Nina, the two of them sitting in a small rose bower.
‘Meg, this is Michele Mauriac.’
If there was a more beautiful woman at the party Margaret had not seen her. Michele Mauriac was a mulatto and the two races, black and white, had combined to give her the best of each. Her skin was slightly darker than café-au-lait, but she was very little darker than some of the Italians just back from summer at the seaside. She had taken off her Doge’s pointed cap and her black hair, cut very short, lay close to a perfectly shaped skull. Her dark, heavily-lidded eyes were coolly amused and there was the hint of a smile on the full, very red lips. Margaret was fascinated by such beauty.
‘French? In Italian films?’
‘I haven’t got as far as Paris yet. Rome was my first stop north from Ougadougou and I don’t seem to have got past it,’ Her English was good, tho
ugh heavily accented.
Margaret had no idea where Ougadougou was, but she wasn’t going to show her ignorance. This French-African girl looked ready to be amused by the ignorance and weaknesses of everyone she might meet. She had the arrogance of someone who was not only intelligent but truly beautiful; there was a sophistication to her that hinted of decadence that she had survived without scars. Margaret felt suddenly provincial.
Nina said, ‘Michele was telling me she’d really like to go to Hollywood, but she’s afraid she would come up against the colour bar there.’
‘Not only there,’ said Margaret, thinking of Kansas City, wondering what effect this girl would have on the men at the country clubs. Probably give them hernias while they sorted out their lust from their prejudices. ‘Don’t you run into it here?’
‘Only outside Rome,’ said Michele. ‘And I’d run into it here, too, if I weren’t a woman. Being a woman helps, don’t you think?’
Nina and Margaret looked at each other. ‘Sometimes,’ said Margaret, replying for both of them. ‘Not always.’
A ravaged elderly woman, dressed as a houri, went by on the arm of a handsome young hussar. ‘Principessa,’ he was saying, ‘you must introduce me to – ’
‘How tragic.’ Nina looked after the odd couple.
‘More so than you think,’ said Michele, but there was no pity in her voice. ‘All she has is her title and all he has are his looks and no brains. It’s not enough these days.’
Margaret said, ‘Who looks after you when you’re not working?’
‘Philip does, don’t you, caro?’ She put out a long slim arm, lithe as a snake, and took Philip Gentleman’s hand as he and Sally came up. ‘He has a very generous nature. Like all Americans.’
‘Thank you,’ said Nina. ‘For all us Americans.’
Michele smiled at them all, then took Philip away. She did not snatch or pull him away; she just seemed to glide off and he went with her like her shadow. Margaret was surprised: she had not expected him to be so pliable and obedient. At least not to a woman, though perhaps to his father.
‘My God,’ said Sally, ‘what a beautiful couple they are!’
‘Who invited her?’
‘I did,’ said Nina. ‘I met her the other evening at the Orbanis’. She’s on everybody’s guest list, because she’s so unusual. The story is that her father was a French diplomat and her mother a chieftain’s daughter. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter. She looks as if it could be true.’
‘We must have them again,’ said Sally.
‘Who are you interested in?’ Margaret said.
‘Both of them,’ Sally looked at her innocently, Annie Oakley straight as a gun-barrel. ‘Aren’t you?’
Then an Arabian sheik grabbed her arm and swept her away to dance. Nina and Margaret moved on slowly through the gardens and their guests. ‘I think,’ said Nina, ‘I’d like a man to spend the night with.’
‘Take your pick. There must be more gigolos here tonight than you could shake a cheque at.’
‘I wouldn’t know how to begin. I haven’t had an affair since – ’ Nina smiled a hostess’ smile at Snow White who looked as if she was about to be slushed by an outsize Dwarf. ‘I wonder what Mother would say if she could hear us talking?’
She’s lost, Margaret thought. And all at once felt an aimlessness of her own. ‘Do you think we should go home?’ she said abruptly.
Nina did not attempt to confuse the villa where they lived with the house where they had been brought up: Kansas City would always be home. But she had to keep looking for Tim and Michael and she knew she would never find them in Kansas City. Her memories of Tim were still as fresh as if they were yesterday’s: the desire for a man to go to bed with tonight grew out of memories of the flesh that she had had so long ago. ‘It would be no better there. Do you want to go back?’
The party, like so many Roman parties, was winding down. Margaret did not know how parties progressed in the rest of Italy; or even in the rest of Rome. But these guests seemed to bring their own ennui, like a social disease that had infected everyone above a certain social status. The band was playing listlessly and a few dancers still lingered on the open-air floor like the survivors of a marathon contest. Margaret wondered if these people, even the diplomats from other countries, still suffered from war fatigue. Only some of the expatriate Americans and English were making a noise, but even their efforts had a forced heartiness about them. They had the embarrassing gaiety of Anglo-Saxons trying to be Mediterranean.
Do I want to go back? To what? ‘Not yet,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll give Europe another chance.’
‘The Europeans will be flattered. Shall I make an announcement?’
‘Not while I’m around. I’m going to bed.’
‘Alone?’
‘How else?’
So they both went to bed, watched regretfully by an assorted pack of harlequins, hussars, condottieri, Grenadier Guards, sheiks, cowboys and a lone Tarzan, all of whom would have deserted their partners to spend the night with either or both of the beautiful American heiresses. The third heiress had disappeared.
She re-appeared next afternoon, still in her Annie Oakley outfit, as Nina and Margaret, covered in sun-tan oil and eye-shades, lay beside the pool. With her were Philip Gentleman and Michele Mauriac, no longer Nero and Doge.
‘We had the most marvellous night. We’ve only just woken up.’ Sally stripped off her buckskins and in her panties and brassiere dived into the pool.
Whom did she spend the night with? Margaret, disturbed, looked at Philip and Michele. They were both in slacks and silk shirts, sleek and beautiful. But Margaret hardly noticed Philip. Her eyes were drawn to Michele. She had been fascinated by the mulatto’s beauty last night, but the Doge’s cloak had hidden her body. Now Margaret found herself staring at the body that the shirt and slacks seemed to expose rather than clothe. She shivered, suddenly aware that she was falling in love with the beauty of this coffee-skinned, lazily-smiling girl. There was nothing sexual to it: it was as if she were moved by something so incredibly beautiful: a piece of statuary, a sunlit sky, anything that suddenly made the eye, the mind and the soul helpless before its perfection. At the same time she knew, only too fearfully, that Michele had her sexual appeal, though not for her.
Nina, behind her dark glasses, had also been studying the French-African girl. But now she spoke to Philip. ‘Would you do me and Meg a favour? Try and persuade Sally to give up motorracing. You’ve had a bad accident, you know the dangers of it.’
‘I never try to persuade a woman to do anything.’
‘Not even make love?’ said Margaret, one eye on Michele.
‘Not even that.’ Philip smiled. ‘I’ve never been a hunter.’
‘Is that true, Michele?’ said Nina.
‘If he is, he disguises it well. I’ve never noticed it.’
‘That’s because you’re a hunter yourself,’ said Philip.
He said it off-handedly: if it was meant to be an insult Michele ignored it. ‘You do what you can with what you have. All I have is this.’ She ran a graceful hand down the outline of her face and body. It was done without conceit: just as a hunter might gesture at a favourite gun, Margaret thought. ‘I don’t have the advantages that you have.’
She included them all in her smile: a good-natured smile but mocking, too. Then Sally lifted herself out of the pool, wiped water from herself with her hands. Her brief underwear clung to her wet, tanned body: in a different, more innocent way she was almost as beautiful as Michele. But there was a healthiness to her that made her looks almost commonplace beside those of the indolent, more sensual mulatto.
‘Ask Michele to persuade Sally,’ said Philip. ‘They are going north tomorrow to compete in some rally in France.’
‘You might have told us,’ said Margaret.
Sally had picked up a towel and was drying her long hair. Head down, avoiding Margaret’s gaze, she said, ‘I’ve had my entry in for some time. I just
needed a partner.’
‘Do you drive?’ Nina asked Michele.
‘A little.’
‘Is that good enough?’
Sally came out from under her towel. ‘We’re not trying to win. It’s just the fun of it. Right, Michele?’
‘It fills in time.’
‘Between what?’ said Margaret.
‘Come inside, Michele.’
Sally stalked off into the villa, leaving her buckskins lying beside the pool like last night’s skin, an identity she no longer wanted. Without a word Michele got lazily to her feet and followed her. She was smiling her arrogantly mocking smile and that too, thought Margaret, is a weapon.
‘Don’t depend on Michele to do anything for you,’ said Philip.
‘I don’t like her,’ said Nina.
‘That wouldn’t worry her in the least. She’s not looking for love or affection. She’ll marry some rich guy and be entirely self-contained even then.’
‘Some rich guy like you?’ said Margaret.
‘You flatter me, Meg.’ But he did not explain whether he meant she was flattering his financial status or his chances with Michele.
‘May I take you two out to dinner tonight?’
‘What about Michele?’
‘I think she and Sally have something arranged.’
He took them to dinner at the Grand Hotel and Nina remarked upon his choice. ‘Why here? Why not the Excelsior or George’s or even Doney’s?’
‘I’m not trying to impress you. But this is one hotel in Rome where our American disease, café society, hasn’t been allowed to penetrate. They are very discreet here and anyone who wants his name or picture spread across the newspapers isn’t welcome. I like anonymity and I get it here. Even the Shah of Persia can be anonymous here if he wants it that way.’
‘I don’t mean to sound rude, Philip, but why do you want to be anonymous?’
He smiled. ‘Meaning you think I’m anonymous anyway? You’re right. I just thought you’d prefer it for yourselves. I thought Meg was very keen on anonymity.’