by Jon Cleary
Touché, thought Margaret.
Later they drove home through the soft Italian night. Philip no longer had his Ferrari, had replaced it with a dark blue Fiat, a good anonymous car. They drove past the stone latticework of the Colosseum, past the long-dry Caracalla’s Baths, through Porta San Sebastiano that was no longer a gateway to anything. Whores stood by the roadside, the only living relics of history: Vespas were no substitutes for chariots, white-gloved policemen were pale stand-ins for centurions. The moon came up over the Tomb of Cecilia Metella and in the Catacombs of San Sebastian shadows moved among the bones, though no light reached there. The past brushed Margaret like a bat’s wing and she felt the humility of being totally anonymous.
‘Rome is a humbling experience,’ said Philip, and Margaret, with a start, wondered if she had spoken aloud. ‘Especially to empire builders.’
‘Perhaps we should bring Daddy back here again,’ said Nina. ‘What does your father do?’
‘He’s an empire builder, too.’ Sitting beside him in the front seat, Margaret saw the profile of Philip’s smile. ‘In a smaller way than your father.’
‘Has he ever been to Rome?’
‘No. He saw Naples, on his way to America. He was not impressed.’
‘So your name isn’t really Mann?’ said Nina shrewdly.
‘It’s good enough.’ He did not sound awkward or uncomfortable, Perhaps after all he is not ashamed of his father, Margaret thought. ‘America is full of families who have changed their name. Some day there may be a Beaufort who will wish they had another name.’
Neither of the sisters said anything. He turned his head, looked first at Margaret, then at Nina in the back seat. But he, too, said nothing. He drove the car in at the gates of the villa. There was no security guard, something that had worried Lucas when he had been here. But kidnappers and bandits were only to be feared in Sicily and Sardinia; Rome was still safe, kidnapping on the mainland still lay in the future. And if a security guard were needed, Margaret thought now, what better one than the son of a Mafia don?
He kissed them both goodnight, in a most gentlemanly way. ‘I’m going to France tomorrow.’
‘With Sally and Michele?’
‘No, I’m flying to Paris.’
‘I wonder if Sally is home yet?’
‘She’s probably spending the night with Michele. I told you, Michele is versatile. Goodnight.’
‘Does he mean what I think he meant?’ Nina watched the car go down the long drive.
‘Sally can look after herself,’ said Margaret, lying bravely, feeling sick.
5
Sally, Michele and Philip left next morning for France. Margaret, Nina and the children and the nurse went down to Amalfi for a month, each sister driving down in her own car. Villas were being renovated and re-decorated and, with the season coming to an end, it was not difficult to rent a place. Other Americans were living in nearby villas; a small colony of writers, most of whom seemed to be homosexual, lived just round the coast. That section of the coast had become fashionable and Nina seemed to take pride in the fact that she and Margaret were in the front line of the foreign invasion.
‘It will all be overrun in a couple of years. The Germans are being allowed to spend money outside Germany now – they’ll be down here soon. And when the English have some money to spend … I can remember once in Hamburg – the day I met Tim – ’ there was just a faint pause – ‘I remember looking at a queue of people and feeling sorry for them, wondering if they had any future at all. And now – ’
‘I don’t think the Germans would be too welcome here.’
‘They’ll be welcome if they have money to spend.’
She sounds just like Philip. ‘Nin, are you trying to be a Scott Fitzgerald heroine?’
They were sitting out on the terrace of the villa they had rented, shaded from the noon sun by a grape arbour. The sea glittered like a field of diamonds below them; far out it faded into a mountain range of white-topped clouds. A ferry boat had come round the point from Salerno, heading for Capri, another hedonist retreat.
Nina did not turn her head, just continued to stare out through her dark glasses at the smudged horizon. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘You mentioned it in one of your letters. We’re just wasting time here.’ She had taken off her own dark glasses, but now she put them back on. ‘You’ll never bump into Tim down here.’
‘Jesus, you can be cruel!’
‘If I am, it’s with the best of intentions. You know the sort of reputation we’re getting? Easy touches for all the bums who want a free party or a free meal.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I don’t need to be told. I can see it. So could you, if you wanted to. We hadn’t been here two days before the first of those writers came up and introduced themselves – they knew all about us. They’ve been in our hair ever since, bringing their friends – ’
‘They’re interesting. A damn sight better than most of those we’ve been entertaining in Rome.’
‘Rome was no criterion. Nin, can’t you see what a lazy, decadent lot they are? Oh, I know one or two of them may have some talent. But the majority of them – ’
‘They keep us entertained, don’t they? How much wit did you ever hear back home to compare with what we hear every night? They’re so much livelier – ’
‘I wasn’t thinking specifically of Kansas City.’
‘Where, then?’
‘I don’t know. Just somewhere where you might, might, hear something about Tim and Michael.’
She knew that was cruel and she intended it to be. She got up and went along to the far end of the terrace where Martha and Emma were playing under the supervision of the nurse. Sometimes she felt guilty about the children. She loved them, but too often, as now, she felt she retreated to them as a defence rather than approached them out of sheer love and the desire to be with them. They had become the nurse’s responsibility, not her own.
‘Let’s take them in and feed them, Ruth. We’ll take them for a drive this afternoon.’
Ruth was a thin pleasant girl from a farm in Nebraska; some day she would finish up back on a farm with children of her own. On the surface she did not appear to have a critical thought in her head, but Margaret sometimes wondered what she thought of this life the Beaufort sisters lived.
‘They’re both very tired, Mrs Minett. They didn’t sleep very well last night.’ She picked up Emma, her face hidden behind the child. ‘The noise of the party – ’
‘Do you think we should take them back to Rome?’
‘It’s not for me to suggest it, Mrs Minett – ’ Last night she had seen two of the men guests kissing each other, something that did not happen on the farms around Chappell, Nebraska.
‘We’ll do it. Pack the things and we’ll leave right after lunch.’
From the other end of the terrace Nina watched her sister and the children. There were times when she envied Margaret her good fortune; today she hated her for that cruel remark about Tim and Michael. Margaret could not guess at the emptiness that was still there within her, that was not helped when she saw Martha and Emma or heard their pealing laughter. Sometimes she wanted to sweep them up in her arms, smother them with the love that she could not expend on her own missing child.
She reacted quietly but coldly when Margaret told her she was returning to Rome. ‘If that’s the way you feel – ’
‘I think it’s better. I might enjoy all this more with you if it were not for the children – ’ Margaret had softened her attitude; she was ashamed of her moment of cruelty.
‘Are you going back home?’
‘I don’t know. I was going home at Christmas anyway. I’ll think about it when I get back to Rome. You’ll stay on for the month here?’
‘Yes.’ Coolly. ‘Perhaps even longer.’
Margaret drove back to Rome, arriving after dark. The children were put to bed as soon as they were bathed and fed. Margaret herself had a bath, put
on a robe and made herself comfortable in bed with the air-mailed copies of the New York Times and the Kansas City Star which arrived each week. Then the phone rang.
‘Meg,’ said Sally, voice strained and crackling from a bad connection, ‘I’m not coming back to Rome.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Antibes.’
‘I thought you were supposed to be in a rally around Rheims or somewhere. How did you do?’
‘That was last week. We won the women drivers’ section.’
‘Congratulations. What’s the rally at Antibes?’
‘Meg, I don’t think you’ve got the drift of what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not coming back to Rome. At all. Michele and I are taking a place here in Antibes for the winter. Then we’re going up to Paris in the spring. Michele thinks it’s time she tried her luck in French films.’
‘And what are you going to do? Try your luck in French films, too?’
‘I’ll keep driving. I’m going to enter the Monte Carlo rally next January.’
‘With Michele as your co-driver?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Sally – ’ It was as if she were stumbling with a new language. ‘Sally, is Michele taking Cindy’s place?’
There was silence at the other end of the line, but on the line itself there were cracklings, whistling, something that even sounded like a truck changing gears. Mountains, valleys, rivers, a border separated them on the line: but something else also separated them. At last Sally said, ‘I’m afraid so, Meg. We’re in love.’
‘Oh Sal – ’ She cried aloud in anguish. ‘God Almighty, can’t you see she couldn’t be in love with anyone but herself?’
The line went dead. Margaret sat with the phone still held to her ear. Then a man’s nasal voice said, ‘Fini, madame?’
‘I think so.’ Margaret looked at the phone. ‘Si. Qui.’
She lay back against the headboard, staring at the newspapers scattered in a debris of headlines: Ike Veto … Train Wreck … Earthquake … The world was falling apart here in her bed. Then she sat up, reached for the small address book on the side table. She flipped through it, thinking, even as she did so, that she had never believed she would be calling on him for help. Then she dialled a number.
‘Philip? I’ve just been talking to Sally. We – we were cut off. Do you know where she and Michele are staying in Antibes?’
She could sense his hesitation. ‘Yes. I don’t think you can do much about it, Meg.’
‘I can try.’
‘I think I better come and see you.’
‘Not tonight.’ She wanted time to think. ‘Tomorrow morning?’
‘I’ll be out at Cinecittà all morning. May I come for lunch?’
She hung up, debated whether she should call Nina, decided against it. Perhaps Sally would come to her senses; there was no need to broadcast the disaster just yet. She swept the newspapers off the bed: a headline slid out of sight: Dow Jones Climbs … There was hope for some, even if they were only the moneymakers. She put out the light and slipped into a dream that gave her no hope at all. Tim and Michele, hand in hand, smiled their mocking smiles as they retreated into the distance …
Philip came for lunch, which they had out on the terrace overlooking the pool. The weather had cooled, clouds coming in over the Alban Hills. She wore a cashmere twin set, he a tweed jacket and a silk club tie with a button-down shirt. He thought she looked Junior League and she thought he looked Ivy League, but neither made any comment. They did not look like a pair who should be discussing what to do about a couple of lesbians.
‘You’ll have to let it run its course,’ he said over the vitello tonnato. ‘Sally, as you know, is a pretty stubborn girl.’
‘What about Michele? Is she stubborn, too? Or can she be bought?’
‘Oh, she can be bought, all right. Everyone has their price, my father says.’
She did not want his father brought into the conversation. ‘I should think Michele would think of nothing else but her price. I’m just surprised you let her attach herself to you.’
He smiled. ‘Don’t be hypocritical, Meg. I saw you looking at her that Sunday we were here. She’s the most gorgeous thing either of us has ever seen. She knew she wasn’t going to be anything permanent with me – I told her that the first night we met. For one thing, you know what my father thinks about blacks. Even half-niggers.’
‘Does she know you call her that?’
‘I don’t call her that at all. I’m quoting what my father would call her if ever he met her. What will your father call her if ever he meets her?’
‘He won’t, I’ll see to that. But my father is not anti-Negro. He would be prejudiced against Michele for other reasons.’
He waited till the young houseman took away their plates and came back with the fruit and cheese. ‘I like the white gloves on your servants. Sometimes I wish I could settle here, have a place and a staff like this, be a Roman gentleman.’
‘Why don’t you? You can’t be short of money.’
‘My father would cut me off without a cent if I mentioned it. I don’t have any money of my own. It’s all in the family.’
A long time later she would realize that he had meant The Family: but she was ignorant then of Mafia society. ‘Ours is family money, too. But we’re allowed a certain amount for ourselves.’
‘I should get your father to talk to mine.’
She ignored that, instead said, ‘I think I’ll go to Antibes anyway. Just for a couple of days.’
‘Leave them be, Meg.’
‘She’s my sister – I have to do something! That Michele is – she’s evil. God knows what she’ll do to Sally.’
‘She’ll grow tired of her eventually, look around for another buyer. Michele isn’t a natural lesbian. She’s almost asexual, if you like.’
‘Like hell she is.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve been to bed with her. You haven’t. It’s like making love to a machine. She doesn’t care whether you’re male or female. All you have to do is meet the price.’
‘Oh God – ’ All at once she broke down, began to weep.
He gave her a handkerchief, sat and watched till she had recovered and dried her eyes. ‘Don’t go to Antibes. I’ll give you their phone number and you can call them. Every day, if you like. But don’t go to see them. It would only be ugly and you might lose Sally forever.’
‘How do you know so much about women? Did they teach you that at the London School of Economics?’
‘I just try to be the opposite of my father. He’s an old-style Sicilian, the sort who never made any attempt to understand a woman. My mother told me that on her death-bed.’
‘You should talk to Nina. She says she’s never felt so womanly since she’s been in Italy.’
‘That’s Italy, not Sicily. Didn’t any of you feel – womanly in Kansas City?’
I did, with Tim. And I suppose Nina did, too, if she were truthful. ‘Occasionally.’
That night she called Sally in Antibes. She made an effort to sound friendly, even helpful. ‘Do you want me to send your things over to you?’
‘I’ll send you a list. And Meg – thanks for calling.’
‘It was a bad line last night.’
‘Meg – have you told Nina yet? No? Well, shall I write her or will you explain?’
‘Sally – ’ She tried not to sound like a mother; or even like an older sister, one who thought she knew too much. She was skating on virgin ice: which was not a good metaphor in the circumstances. ‘Sal, let’s keep it between us for the time being.’
‘Meg, I’m not ashamed of what I’m – ’
‘Don’t let’s argue again – please. I’m not making any moral judgement. All I’m trying to do is not have Mother and Daddy find out. You may not be ashamed of what you’re doing, but it would wreck them both. You know what they’re like. You don’t want that, do you, if it can be avoided?’
‘No, of course not – ’
‘All right, th
en. I’ll just tell Nina you’ve decided to set up house in Antibes because you want to start preparing for – what was it? The Monte Carlo rally? Let her find out in her own time what’s going on. I don’t for a moment think she would tell Mother and Daddy if she knew, but the less lines we have to Kansas City the better. All I ask, Sally, is – please be discreet.’
Margaret thought she heard what could have been a sob. Then Sally said in a strained voice, ‘I do love you, Meg. All of you. But I can’t help this …’
‘Goodnight, darling. Give – ’ But she could not send any love to Michele. ‘Remember me to Michele.’
6
Nina came back from Amalfi at the end of the month with two American writers in tow, both homosexual. They kissed Margaret as if they were long-lost maiden aunts, admired the shirt she was wearing, flicked fingers at the children and went off to one of the guest rooms for a nap. One of them was short and fat and the other tall and thin and they reminded Margaret of an illustration she had seen.
‘They look like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, less a few hormones. Do they attack windmills in their writing?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never read anything they’ve written. Have you heard from Sally?’
‘She’s staying on in France, at Antibes. She and Michele are going to drive in the Monte Carlo rally at the end of January.’
‘With Michele, eh?’ Nina seemed unconcerned, even uninterested.
‘I’m going home, Nin. I don’t think Rome suits the children. You don’t mind, do you? I mean my going home?’
A faint shadow crossed Nina’s face, but it was gone in the flicker of an eyelid. ‘Of course not. You have to think of the children. I may come home for Christmas.’
‘Do come, please. For Mother’s sake. I spoke to Daddy a couple of nights ago. He says she isn’t as well as she used to be.’
‘I’ll come, then.’ The shadow crossed her face again, lingering this time. ‘Have we been cruel to them, Meg?’
‘I think so,’ said Margaret after a moment.
She left for home at the end of the week. Philip, Nina and the two writers came to the airport to see her, the nurse and the children safely aboard the plane. The writers were as compulsively witty as they had been for the past five days and Margaret noticed that even Nina seemed tired of them. Impulsively she wanted to ask Nina to walk on to the plane with her, come home at once; but she held back. Nina and Sally had to go their own ways, she could not take on the responsibility of both of them.