Sir Pompey And Madame Juno

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by Martin Armstrong


  ‘George Heather.’

  She turned from him with a little sigh. ‘You’re like a boy I knew once,’ she said.

  She followed him to the front door, opened it for him, and stood watching his face as he examined his bicycle. But the bicycle had escaped with the loss of a little paint and he turned to say good-bye.

  ‘Call in, won’t you?’ she said, ‘if you happen to pass this way again.’

  He thanked her, and promised he would. ‘But I don’t suppose I shall come this way again,’ he said. ‘You see, I live in London.’

  She watched him ride away, and then, feeling suddenly lonely, latched the front door and crossed the road to the corner house opposite her own, where she had a friend. And sitting in the friend’s front room Miss Witherspoon told of the boy and the bicycle accident. ‘It quite took me back,’ she said, ‘to the happy days of the War.’

  Half an hour later, as she rose to return home, her friend pointed across the road. ‘Do you see the new building?’ she asked.

  Miss Witherspoon glanced across. They were digging out the foundations of a new house in the gap between two houses opposite.

  ‘But that’s my view,’ she cried. ‘They’re shutting out my view of the sea.’

  The Contessa

  An English Lady dressed in black WAS walking with her little boy down the Via Strozzi in Florence. The hot afternoon sun filled the streets, but the small Piazza Strozzi, brim-full of the shadow of the great gaunt palace on its western side, looked, as they passed it, like a dark, cool cistern.

  ‘What’s that place, Mother?’ asked the little boy, pointing at the palace.

  ‘That’s a palace, darling-a very old palace.’

  The little boy stared at the great wall with a puzzled look. ‘But I thought … I didn’t know …!’

  ‘You didn’t know what, darling?’

  ‘I didn’t know palaces were like that. It’s got iron bars on the windows.’

  But now they were turning the north-west corner of the palace into the gay, sunny street that leads to the river.

  ‘You won’t forget, will you, Julian,’ said the lady, ‘to behave well at your Grandmother’s?’

  The little boy looked up at her with a humorous smile. ‘Don’t I generally behave well?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes: but Grandmother may seem to be … well, rather a strange old lady. I mean, if … if you don’t very much like her, you’ll be polite all the same, won’t you?’

  ‘Why? Isn’t she nice?’

  ‘I don’t know, dear. I’m like you, you see: I’ve never met her.’

  ‘And didn’t Father like her either?’

  ‘Well, Father never saw her, you know, after he was a little boy a year older than you.’

  ‘But wasn’t she his mother?’

  ‘Yes: but she was rather a funny mother and when he was seven years old she went away from home and never came back. She oughtn’t to have done that, ought she?’

  ‘And left Father all alone?’

  ‘Oh no: there was Grandpapa and your Auntie Nan too.’

  ‘Perhaps Father was glad, if she wasn’t nice.’

  ‘Oh, she may be quite nice really: I don’t know. I only meant that if you didn’t like her you mustn’t mind. We shan’t be there long, you see: just a short call.’

  The street they were following had widened into an irregular piazza. Bright sunshine and keen shadows lay upon old grey houses and gay shop-windows. Here and there a narrow street, dark with shadow, opened between the houses. A tall column rose in the middle of the piazza: near it cabs stood waiting to be hired and pigeons bowed and strutted about its base or flew up into the sunlight with a soft clatter of wings. The lady and the little boy stopped near the dark entrance of a church and as the boy peered into the gloom he saw a baize door swing open. A woman, thickly veiled in black crape, came out: the door closed behind her with a muffled thud and a cold, sweet, sickly smell like burning sugar puffed out at him. He turned away and his eyes wandered back to the piazza and the column. A marble and bronze figure stood on the top of it, and just as he was looking at it, a pigeon with outstretched wings hung above it and, reaching down pink feet, settled on its head.

  ‘Mother,’ he asked, ‘who’s that a statue of?’

  His mother was gazing at the dark side-streets across the piazza.

  ‘That? I don’t know, dear. Nobody in particular, I think.’ She took his hand and they crossed the piazza and began to enter one of the side-streets. Its pavements were so narrow that they had to walk in the roadway. Dark houses rose to a great height on each side: dark doorways opened into black, strangely-smelling shops: the air was cool and slightly sour like a yard that has just been sluiced and swept. The boy began to feel vaguely apprehensive.

  ‘Mother,’ he asked as he trotted by her side, ‘aren’t we getting into rather … rather a strange place?’

  It was what the lady herself had been thinking, and the quaver in his voice sent a faint echo of disquiet across her mind. She stopped and opened a little bag that hung from her wrist. ‘Just let me make sure once more,’ she said, taking out a letter. She glanced at it and, folding it again, placed it back in the bag. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we’re all right. Number ninety-seven.’ But she had made up her mind that if number ninety-seven looked uninviting they would not pay their call.

  But a little farther on, the street became wider and less sinister, and the door of ninety-seven, which stood ajar, opened into a square court surrounded by arches and pillars. The court was moss-grown and neglected: an old cat lay sleeping near the drain in the centre of it. The little boy began to go towards it, but the lady held him back. ‘Don’t touch it, dear,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look very clean.’ Two withered shrubs in great terracotta jars stood against two adjacent pillars, and passing between them under the colonnade they began to climb the broad stone staircase that led to the upper floors. A stale, underground smell of damp stone hung about the winding tunnel of the stair. At one of the turnings a little girl passed them: her small, dirty face had the alert eyes of a marmousette. Somewhere above them a shrill voice was shouting. ‘Beppina!’ it shouted. ‘Beppina!’ But the little girl continued to climb leisurely downstairs. On the landing they came upon a deep-bosomed, dishevelled woman standing at an open door. With one hand she held the door, with the other she clutched together her unbuttoned bodice. She stared at the lady and the boy with bold, suspicious eyes.

  ‘La Contessa Pazzoli?’ the lady asked timidly.

  ‘Su!’ the woman answered with a nod of her head towards the ascending stair, and as they turned the next corner the boy, looking timidly back, saw her sullen stare following them.

  On the next landing they knocked at a large door. An elderly Italian woman admitted them. ‘Pass, Signora! Pass!’ she said, holding the door open for them to enter, and they stepped into a wide, dark hall full of the thick, furry smell of old upholstery. By degrees they realized through the dimness the crimson of heavy curtains, a great sofa and massive arm-chairs, and a table loaded with miscellaneous objects, conspicuous among them a tall, florid bronze – a confusion of plunging shapes. The place was airless, faded, unhappy-grandeur gone threadbare. It seemed as if the sun could not have shone there for a hundred years. Ponderous frames hung from the walls: on either side of a vast stone chimneypiece rose a doorway of carved stone. Both the doors were closed.

  The woman led them to the sofa and invited them to be seated. ‘I will tell the Contessa,’ she said, and crossed the hall.

  The little boy stroked the arm of the sofa. ‘Is it satin, Mother?’ he whispered.

  The lady nodded. The woman opened the farther of the two doors, letting out into the hall a murmur of voices. The voices ceased as she went in, pulling-to but not shutting the door behind her, and soon they heard her announcing the visitors. A harsh old woman’s voice interrupted her. ‘Chi è?’ it asked irritably. ‘Come? What is the woman saying? Inglesi? I can’t hear a word. Sir George, please go and find out
who it is.’

  Then the noise of conversation began again, and a moment later the door opened and a gentleman came out and crossed the hall towards them. He was an old gentleman, tall, spare, and distinguished looking. He wore a black morning-coat and an elaborate black-satin tie in which a diamond sparkled. His long, parched face was set off by a fine nose. But as soon as he spoke his face lost its dignity and became loose and foolish. He bowed as the lady rose from the sofa.

  ‘The Contessa has asked me to … er! These Italian servants … er … sometimes … er!’

  ‘I am Mrs. Fillimore, Mrs. Julian Fillimore,’ said the lady, and when this did not appear to have enlightened the old gentleman she added: ‘My husband, you see, was the Contessa’s son.’

  ‘Oh … ah … to be sure!’ the old gentleman whispered. ‘Her earlier marriage, of course,’ He made a foreign gesture as though condoning an indiscretion. ‘Of course, we all know that, with the dear Contessa, family details are a little … er … a little involved.’ He threw up his head and uttered a little shower of cackles. ‘But allow me to … er!’ and he began to lead the way to the door. ‘And this, I suppose, is a grandson?’ He paused to lay a hand on Julian’s shoulder. ‘Well, well! Well, well!’

  The little boy flinched at the old gentleman’s touch. At first sight he had rather liked him. He had been quietly staring at him all the time he was talking to his mother. But when he had given that strange cackle Julian knew instantly that he disliked the old gentleman and was afraid of him. He could not have explained why. All he could have said would have been that there was a little piece of gold in the old gentleman’s teeth when he laughed and that his eyes seemed to be green. Green and the horrid little laugh! He remembered a parrot which had bitten his finger. His nurse had told him that it was a very wicked bird – ‘a foul-mouthed creature,’ she had said; and the expression, which was new to Julian, had hinted, for him, at something vaguely sinister. If his grandmother was like the old gentleman he knew that he would not like her at all.

  Though the room they now entered was a large one, its atmosphere was close. The new-comers were repelled by it on the very threshold, for it was thick and stale and full of a nauseous sweet perfume which only half disguised its staleness. At the first glance the room, by reason of its great height and the two tall windows immediately opposite to the door, was impressive; but the next suggestion was one of bareness and neglect, for its walls were blotched and discoloured by dampness and it seemed to be empty. But, as they soon discovered, it was not empty. It was rather as if its last remains of grandeur had been driven by age and poverty to the end of the room farthest from the door. There a vast edifice of yellow brocade, broad and cavernous at its base, tapered up to an elaborate golden coronet slung from the ceiling by silken ropes and tassels. On either side of it hung an enormous picture, each a crowded scene of richly-dressed figures. As the old gentleman led them across the bare floor they saw that the yellow curtains were the canopy of a great bed.

  ‘You knew,’ he whispered, ‘that the Contessa had been obliged for the last week to keep her bed?’ He paused and bent his head to the lady’s ear. ‘Between ourselves, she’s in a bad way: much worse than she will admit.’

  ‘Come along, Sir George! Come along!’ called a harsh voice from the bed, the same voice they had heard before. ‘Bring them along. Don’t stand mumbling there. Who are they?’

  The old gentleman tiptoed to the bed, leaving the lady and the little boy standing alone. In the bed, propped against pillows and covered with a green brocaded bedspread, sat a curious figure. It wore a fashionable hat with a sweeping ostrich-plume and a loose velvet jacket edged with fur. The face was sharp-featured and aristocratic – an older and more faded version, Mrs. Fillimore thought to herself, of Sir Joshua’s Mrs. Siddons. The remains of beauty were vitiated by the hardness of her expression and voice. Now she was engaged in a subdued dialogue with Sir George. The little boy stared at her apprehensively. He felt uncomfortable and half ashamed at seeing an old lady in bed. But it was not only that. She had, after all, proved to be, in his innocent eyes, like, far too like, the old gentleman. They had time-he and his mother – as they stood there rather uncomfortably waiting, to notice also the other people in the room. Two of them, seated in threadbare brocaded chairs, were ladies. The third – a smartly-dressed young man with a glossy black head – stood holding his hat, cane, and pale-grey gloves near a vast black stove whose pipe rose like a charred pine-trunk and broke through the faded wall-paper high up under the ceiling. But suddenly they heard the old lady’s voice from the bed:

  ‘Come along, Mrs. Fillimore. Come here and let us have a look at you.’

  The lady went towards the bed, followed by her little boy.

  ‘Now, tell me your name. A mother-in-law can’t call her daughter-in-law Misses.’

  ‘My name is Letitia.’

  ‘Letitia! Not a bad name. No, I don’t mind Letitia. And how long, Letitia, is it since you married Julian?’

  ‘We were married nearly nine years ago.’

  ‘And Julian left you well-off?’

  ‘My husband naturally left me all he had,’ Mrs. Fillimore replied with reserve.

  ‘Naturally, you say? You don’t think, then, that he might have remembered his mother?’

  Mrs. Fillimore flushed and fixed her glance more intently on the Contessa. The old woman was inspecting her with sharp, aggressive eyes. Was the question serious or intended to be humorous? In either case she had evidently meant to provoke a reply, so Mrs. Phillimore gave her a reply.

  ‘That,’ she said, ‘would surely have needed rather a long memory?’ Sir George threw up his head and uttered his dry cackle, but the Contessa pursed her lips and abandoned the subject, turning to the rest of the company.

  ‘Emily,’ she said to the elder of the two ladies, ‘this is my daughter-in-law Letitia. That, Letitia, is the Marchesa Salimbene who used to play the piano … but wonderfully, superbly … and has now given it up for poetry-writing or something.’

  The Marchesa shook hands with Mrs. Fillimore and then half turned towards the bed. ‘I fear, Susan,’ she replied with an American accent, ‘that you don’t understand poetry. To me my poetry is more than my playing ever was.’

  The Contessa laughed derisively. ‘My dear Emily, you’re a perfect goose. You and your poetry!’

  The second lady, pale, thin-lipped, virginal, who, it seemed, could never have been young, had risen from her chair expecting to be introduced, but the Contessa ignored her and proceeded to introduce the young man. ‘Count Vivaldi, the son of a dear friend of mine who won’t come to see me because she’s afraid I may borrow money from her.’

  The young Italian, faultlessly dressed, his black head smooth and bright as marble, bowed in silence and without the smallest change in his handsome, swarthy face.

  ‘Isn’t that it, Ascanio?’ the Contessa persisted more loudly.

  ‘I gave you her message, Contessa,’ the young man replied, ‘that she hoped to be able to call later.’

  ‘But, in the end, will unhappily be prevented! Confess, Ascanio!’

  ‘Unfortunately I am not a clairvoyant, Contessa.’

  The Contessa laughed. ‘Of course not. Just a nice, simple, but rather artful young man. Eh?’ She waved a hand towards the second lady. This other person, Letitia, is Miss Mildred Carver. Miss Carver is supposed to be some relation of mine, aren’t you, Mildred? But I can never discover exactly where she comes in. Where do you come in, Mildred?’

  Miss Carver parted her straight, expressionless lips. ‘Well, my grandfather – mother’s father-married your Aunt Sarah as his second wife. Or rather, it was not my grandfather, I believe, but my grandfather’s brother, his younger …’

  ‘Well, let us leave it at that, Mildred. We can’t all be expected to be thrilled by your family affairs, my dear. But where does that child come from?’ the Contessa asked, catching sight for the first time of the little boy. ‘But, of course, I remember. It’s lit
tle … little what’s-his-name?’

  The boy, embarrassed and afraid of the fierce old lady, shrank against his mother.

  ‘His name is Julian,’ said Mrs. Fillimore.

  ‘Julian, to be sure. Called after his father. The name, of course, comes from my family. Come here, Julian.’ The Contessa’s voice had grown a little less harsh.

  Mrs. Fillimore led the boy to the bed.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ said the old lady, ‘and what do you think of your Granny? You’ve come a year or so too late, I’m afraid. We people aren’t what we used to be: are we, Sir George?’

  Sir George held up his hands. ‘My dear Contessa, you don’t look a day older than you did ten years ago.’ He turned away to the Marchesa. ‘She looked a hundred even then,’ he cackled.

  ‘Sh … sh! Please be careful, Sir George,’ whispered Miss Carver, scowling at the old man.

  Sir George sniffed scornfully. ‘She’s as deaf as a post,’ he said.

  The Marchesa glanced up at him with quiet contempt. ‘Yes,’ she said; ‘but so are you, you see, and so you never know how loud you speak.’

  But the Contessa had heard nothing. She was shaking a roguish finger at Sir George, and little Julian, staring at her in fascinated repulsion, saw the sudden rainbow flash of a jewel on her bony hand. As for Sir George, he had not noticed her playfulness. Snubbed by the Marchesa, he had gone over to Miss Carver and was engaging her and the young Count in a discussion on Italian art. The Marchesa turned to talk to Mrs. Fillimore and, finding himself deserted, the little boy continued to stare at his grandmother. As he watched her he saw her face change and she looked, suddenly, as if she were all alone. She had forgotten her visitors, it seemed, and was thinking. Then with a sudden movement she turned her head and glanced into a little mirror which hung inside the bed-curtain on a level with her face. Julian saw her raise a hand to her hat and smooth the plume. Then with a fluttering hand she patted her cheeks. Unexpectedly she turned from the mirror and, finding Julian’s eyes fixed upon her, made a little face at him. The boy blushed crimson and turned away his head. When he ventured to look again he saw that his grandmother was again peeping into the little mirror. The great yellow curtain half screened her from the rest of her visitors. She held something in her hand – a little box, it seemed – and she was dipping one finger into it and then rubbing first one cheek and then the other. Once she darted a quick, crafty glance at the company, but seeing that she was unobserved she continued busily and tremulously to fumble at the little box and dab with one jewelled finger at her face. But Sir George had an eye open for everything. He had seen, and with a gesture of scornful toleration he turned his back to the bed and executed a dumb-show imitation of the Contessa’s activities, followed by his inevitable cackle.

 

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