Sir Pompey And Madame Juno

by Martin Armstrong

  ‘Have you ever seen one of our Punch and Judy shows, Count?’ he asked the young Italian.

  The young man raised his eyebrows at the apparent inconsequence of the question. ‘I have read of them,’ he said. ‘They are derived, I believe, from the old Pulcinella plays in Naples. But I have never seen one.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sir George cackled mischievously, ‘you will see one, or something like one, before very long.’

  ‘Before long? I think not. I fear I shall not be in England again for some time.’

  Julian could tell that there was some hidden meaning in what Sir George had said and a still greater fear and dislike of him grew up in his heart. He glanced again at his grandmother. She had emerged now from the curtain and sat propped against her pillows as before, her hands clasped on the green brocade cover in front of her. With a sudden thrill of horror he saw that her cheeks were streaked and blotched with red. At the same moment Sir George turned. ‘Only fancy, Contessa,’ he shouted, and the other guests, turning to the Contessa as he spoke, gave a little shocked gasp: ‘only fancy, our young friend here has never seen a Punch and Judy show!’

  But the Contessa did not hear him. She sat with her head bent slightly forward and her eyes half closed. With her reddened cheeks and plumed hat she looked like a large doll. Julian was afraid and crept over to his mother, who sat near the Marchesa. Sir George, with occasional glances towards the bed, was chattering once again to Miss Carver and the young Count. The Contessa sighed, opened her eyes, and after a moment raised her head. It was as if she had awoken from a trance.

  ‘No, certainly,’ she said gaily, ‘not what we used to be: are we, Sir George?’

  At the sound of her voice Sir George turned. ‘Well, you can’t expect us all, dear Contessa, to … er … to preserve our looks as you do. Upon my word, you’re wonderful. Isn’t she, Marchesa?’

  The Contessa simpered. ‘Oh, don’t start Emily off!’ she cried. ‘When it’s a question of my looks she’s sure to say something horrid.’

  ‘My dear Susan, when have I said horrid things about your looks? Never, I’m sure! If you would be content to look like an old lady …’

  ‘There! What did I say? Hateful thing!’

  Sir George let off a volley of delighted cackles. ‘Beauty unadorned!’ he carolled. ‘Certainly a rare possession: only too rare, alas! We are not all, are we, Contessa, as fortunate as the Marchesa?’

  ‘You should have learnt by this time, Sir George,’ said the Marchesa coldly, ‘that both polite and impolite dishonesty is wasted on me.’

  Sir George turned away with a gesture of mock distress. ‘The Marchesa is always so unkind to me, Miss Carver.’

  Miss Carver’s lips and eyebrows grew for a brief moment thinner. It was uncertain whether she had smiled or frowned.

  The Contessa chuckled. ‘Dishonesty, my dear Emily! But three-quarters of our social intercourse is dishonesty. What should we do without it? If you succeeded in making poor Sir George honest you would merely have succeeded in making him more detestable than he is already.’

  ‘Brava! Brava, Contessa! How … er … how delightful to hear you in your old form again!’

  The Contessa sighed. ‘I wish I were; but I’m not. I’m not really feeling well to-day.’

  Miss Carver glanced sharply at the old lady. ‘Is it not time you rested a little, Contessa?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Mildred, since you ask me, it is not.’

  But Miss Carver persisted. ‘You must remember,’ she observed, ‘that Dr. Morozzi said you were to see no one to-day.’

  ‘Morozzi is a fool and I told him as much yesterday,’ replied the Contessa. ‘If I were to give in to him and you I should be dead of boredom in a week.’

  Miss Carver shrugged her narrow shoulders.

  ‘But where is Isabella?’ the Contessa asked suddenly.

  The visitors gazed atone another. The Contessa was always surprising them.

  ‘Isabella? Whom do you mean, Susan?’ the Marchesa asked.

  ‘Isabella, my daughter-in-law.’

  Mrs. Fillimore returned to the bed. ‘You mean me, don’t you, Contessa? You mean Letitia!’

  ‘Yes, you, my dear. That’s right. Why do you keep running away? Come and sit here: I want to talk to you.’

  Sir George tiptoed up to them, smiling and washing his clasped hands. He behaved, Mrs. Fillimore was beginning more and more to feel, like a polite detective. But the Contessa drove him away. ‘Go away, Sir George. Go away. Go and try if you can make Miss Carver laugh: no one has succeeded so far. I want to talk to Isabella.’

  ‘To Letitia!’ Miss Fillimore corrected gently.

  ‘Yes, to Letitia!’ The Contessa patted her hand: her voice had suddenly become gentle. For a while she said nothing: she was waiting for the guests to resume their conversations. ‘You mustn’t mind Sir George,’ she whispered, as though asking an indulgence. Then, looking at her daughter-in-law, she began: ‘Tell me, my dear, about my little Federigo.’

  ‘Federigo, Contessa?’

  ‘Your husband, my dear.’

  ‘Julian.’

  ‘Yes, Julian. Did he speak to you of his mother, ever?’

  ‘Sometimes, Contessa. But, you see, he was so small, wasn’t he, when …’

  ‘Go on, my dear. When I ran away.’

  ‘When you ran away, that he hardly remembered.’

  ‘Of course, poor little lad! Only seven. A pretty boy he was then: prettier than his sister. You must try not to think too hardly of me, my dear. I can’t tell you about it all here; and, besides, I’m too tired. The past’s the past: there’s no good digging it up at this time of day.’

  ‘He told me once, I remember,’ said Mrs. Fillimore, ‘that you were very beautiful.’

  ‘Did he? Did he really? Think of that!’ The Contessa’s voice grew reflective, remote. ‘Think of it!’ she repeated. ‘That he should have remembered that!’ Her voice died away in a whisper and she sat holding her daughter-in-law’s hand, her eyes half closed. The plume in her hat nodded suddenly forward, and Mrs. Fillimore, looking into her face, saw that she had fallen into a dose. The old woman’s little gust of tenderness had disarmed her dislike and, as she gazed at the unconscious figure with its festive hat and daubed cheeks, faintly oscillating like a realistic waxwork to its short, quick breathing, a great pity invaded her and she stroked with her fingers the small hand that she held in hers. She was disturbed by a whisper beside her. Sir George had tiptoed up again. ‘Is she … er … ? Is she … er … ?’ he whispered.

  ‘She’s asleep. Please don’t disturb her,’ Mrs. Fillimore whispered back.

  He stood gazing at the fantastic swaying figure. ‘Poor Susan!’ he murmured. ‘A strange spectacle!’

  But the Marchesa, catching Mrs. Fillimore’s eye, called him away. ‘Come here, Sir George. If you must talk, you can talk to me.’

  It seemed to Mrs. Fillimore that an immense time passed as she sat holding the old lady’s hand and listening passively to the ebb and flow of conversation behind her. The young Italian’s precise English, the colourless voice of Miss Carver, the restrained cackle of Sir George and the slightly plaintive accent of the Marchesa mingled in a rising and falling drone. The little boy Julian was sitting by himself in a huge chair near the foot of the bed. Half turning her head, she could see him from where she sat. His eyes met hers: he was mutely asking her to take him away. She nodded encouragement to him, nodded again, and whispered, ‘Soon!’ His eyebrows went up: then he nodded back to her and smiled. When her eyes returned to the bed the Contessa was awake and gazing at her with a vague question in her glance. Her lips moved: she began to murmur something. Mrs. Fillimore leaned forward to hear. ‘Dino!’ the old lady was saying. ‘The child. Where is he?’ Mrs. Fillimore beckoned to Julian, and the little boy came and stood by the bed. The Contessa nodded her head and suddenly began speaking to him in Italian. The boy drew back. This strange, incomprehensible chatter from his strange grandmother alarmed him.
r />   ‘He doesn’t understand Italian, Contessa.’ Mrs. Fillimore told her.

  ‘Not understand? But isn’t it Dino?’

  ‘No. Julian.’

  ‘Not Federigo’s son?’

  ‘No, Contessa. Julian’s son. I am Julian’s wife, you know.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Julian! You know I meant Julian,’ said the old woman irritably. ‘Come here, my dear.’ Julian took a step forward. ‘Give me your hand.’ She was fumbling with her own hands as though trying to take off imaginary gloves. ‘Bother!’ she muttered to herself. ‘Bother!’ The clumsiness and weakness of her hands were making her angry. Then Mrs. Fillimore saw that she was fumbling at a ring, a single great diamond; and next moment she had succeeded in getting it off. But it fell on to the green bedspread and she was baffled again. Mrs. Fillimore found it for her and placed it in her hand. The old woman took it between finger and thumb. ‘Hold out your hand, dear,’ she said to Julian. Her own hand shook and it was some time before she succeeded in slipping the ring on to one of the boy’s fingers. ‘That belonged to your great-grandmother,’ she told him. She folded his fingers against his palm and clasped his hand in hers. ‘There! Hold your little hand tight, like that, and don’t open it till you get home.’

  But again Sir George was beside them. ‘Be careful, Contessa!’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything … er … ill-advised.’

  The old woman looked up at him and her face hardened. A parrot-like mischief appeared in her eyes. ‘Ah, there you are! So you saw, did you? Poor Sir George! The assets keep diminishing, don’t they? But you must be accustomed to disappointments by now: whereas Mildred there is an incurable optimist. She still firmly believes that I am a rich relation. Still expecting, aren’t you, Mildred? Though not, we’ll hope, in the sense in which the word is sometimes used.’

  The Contessa burst into a peal of laughter, so loud, so gay that all the visitors turned at once towards the bed. But the laughter broke off in mid-flight – broke off into sobs and sharp, spasmodic gasps. She clutched at her breast with groping hands. A sound like a smothered shriek burst from her lips. Miss Carver leapt from her chair and hurried to the bed. ‘Leave it to me,’ she whispered to Mrs. Fillimore. ‘I understand.’

  Mrs. Fillimore rose and led Julian away to where the Marchesa and the young Count stood waiting in consternation. From there the scene about the bed was hidden by the yellow curtain: but from behind it they could hear a shuffling of bedclothes and the sound of agitated movements, and once the curtain bulged suddenly out as if someone had fallen against it. Then all was quiet, and soon Miss Carver, her face ashen, appeared round the curtain holding in one hand the Contessa’s gay hat. For a moment she stared as if stupefied: then, meeting the scared and questioning glances of the visitors, she parted her lips as if to speak. But at that moment her eyes fell on Julian and she checked herself.

  The Marchesa turned to Mrs. Fillimore. ‘Hadn’t you better take the boy away?’ she whispered.

  The remark roused Mrs. Fillimore, and taking Julian by the hand she led him towards the door. He trotted beside her, still holding his hand tightly closed as his grandmother had folded it. He was glad to be going at last out of that strange company. What had happened to his grandmother when she had laughed in that curious way? She must have choked, he thought; and now they were making her sit still till she had recovered. She had been so strange, so alarming all the time, that her final behaviour had seemed to him hardly more startling than the rest. As he went out into the hall he glanced back inquisitively at the bed to see what she was doing. In the dim yellow cave of the canopy all was strangely quiet. Except for the shape under the green brocade cover it seemed as if his grandmother had vanished. It reminded him of something he had once seen at Maskelyne and Devant’s. As they crossed the hall they heard Sir George’s voice calling from the bedroom. ‘Angelina! Angelina!’ he called, and the woman who had admitted them hurried past them towards the bedroom door.

  The young Count left immediately after Mrs. Fillimore, and a few minutes later Sir George and the Marchesa went out, leaving Miss Carver and the woman in charge. They crossed the hall in silence. As Sir George pulled-to the heavy frontdoor behind them the noise of its closing echoed solemnly down the damp stair. The Marchesa gave a little shiver. Sir George, peering shortsightedly at the steps, shook his head. ‘Poor Susan!’ he said. ‘Poor Susan! Always so erratic. Just like her to upset us all like this!’ And as they rounded the turn of the stair he added sadly: ‘She owes me several hundred pounds which I can ill afford. Have you … er … have you suffered at all, Marchesa?’

  ‘I am not a moneylender,’ the Marchesa answered coldly, ‘but I have sometimes given presents.’

  Nanny

  It was unbelievable to David and Janet that Nanny should be leaving. They would have been less surprised to hear that Father was leaving. Father, after all, went away every morning and did not get back till nearly bedtime: he was a movable and unstable item. But Nanny, like Mother, was of the order of eternal things: she had been there always from the beginning. She must, David thought, be an extremely old woman. Yet now she was leaving them to be married: surely an extraordinary thing for her to do! Mother seemed to think so, too. ‘Some people,’ David had overheard her say to Father, ‘seem never to know when they are well off.’

  She was going to marry Robert. David knew Robert quite well. He had frequently met him in the kitchen. He had a woolly beard that seemed to be fastened on round his ears, like Santa Claus’s; above it his two cheeks stuck out like apples, and he had nice blue eyes which seemed always to be twinkling. David had liked him from the first, and now it was a shock to him to hear that he was going to marry Nanny. He had never suspected that Robert and Nanny loved one another better than they loved him: he felt as if they had been practising a deception upon him all this time. ‘Why, I declare! My boy’s quite jealous,’ said Nanny, and when they both laughed David blushed scarlet.

  When Nanny went there would be only Martha the housemaid left. Old Cookie had gone away some time ago, and there was a new cook whom David hated, because one day, when he had gone into the kitchen as usual, she had pointed to his footmarks on her newly-scrubbed floor and remarked tartly that little boys should learn to put their feet in their pockets!

  When the moment came for Nanny to leave, there was a hullabaloo. Nanny stood in the middle of the nursery with her hat and coat on, looking pale and embarrassed. A strange tin box with cord round it, which David had never seen before, stood near the door with her other coat and umbrella laid neatly on the top of it. Mother was there, too, and suddenly her face began to twitch. It was difficult at first to tell whether she was laughing or crying till, to David’s horror, two tears ran down her cheeks. He had never seen Mother cry: in fact, he had always believed that only children cried; and she was doing it quite quietly too, without any of the noise that he and Janet always made. Janet, seeing Mother cry, broke out suddenly into a loud howl. It was awful. Then Nanny stooped down and kissed him good-bye: as she did so, a tear ran out of her left eye and down the edge of her nose. At that, David too started whimpering, and by the time he had pulled himself together again Mother was standing by the nursery window, looking out. ‘Hurry up, David!’ she was saying. ‘Come and wave to Nanny,’ David went to the window. The cab was already moving away and in its window he saw Nanny waving a white pocket-handkerchief. When the cab had vanished round the corner and they suddenly found themselves alone in the nursery, it seemed as if the whole world was plunged into a profound silence.

  *

  Nanny’s new home was only two miles away. It was in one of a series of new red-brick and slate-roofed streets which sprawled up the side of what had been a beautiful wooded valley, until, a few years ago, the town had stretched a new arm and, at the end of the arm, had opened out a broad new hand which had laid hold of a whole wooded hillside. An estate at the opposite side of the valley had been presented by its owner to the town and was now laid out as a public park.

 
Most of their walks took them into the Park. They went there with Mother or Nanny and, after Nanny had left them, with Nurse. Nurse was the name of the new nurse. She was nice, but she was different from Nanny, and she had a curious smell of camphor and stewed prunes.

  Soon after Nanny’s departure, they were told that they were going to be taken to see her. Martha took them because Martha knew the way. They walked right through the Park and out by an iron gate at the far end into a strange new world. David was wearing a new straw hat so that he felt and behaved differently from usual. A cinder-path, with a high wall on one side and a low one on the other, led up a steep hill. David climbed on to the low wall and walked along the top of it. When Martha told him to come down he took no notice. ‘Very well!’ said Martha. ‘If you tumble down and break your leg, don’t ask me to help you, ‘cos I won’t: that’s all! Look what a good girl Janet is!’ David looked down at Janet. She was holding Martha’s hand and she had her goody-goody face on, a face which always infuriated him. ‘It’s only because she’s frightened to climb the wall!’ he sneered.

  Nanny’s house was called Number Twenty-Nine. Martha told David it was a flat; why, he could not understand because when the front-door was opened you saw a steep flight of stairs covered with new oilcloth. ‘Well, I never!’ said Nanny, beaming in the doorway. ‘And David’s got anew hat, too!’ She shepherded them inside and shut the door. ‘And how’s my precious?’ she asked, lifting up Janet and carrying her up the steep oilcloth stairs. The rooms smelt of polish and new carpet. In the kitchen a bright fire danced and crackled in the grate, and the shovel and poker and tongs and the handle of the oven-door shone like silver. There were three pots of geraniums in the window, with leaves like little green dusty plates tilted outwards towards the light. In the sitting-room, which was never used and had a cold, inhospitable smell of its own, a mat with long white fur lay before the empty fireplace in which there was a pink paper fan. There was a mirror like a frozen pool over the mantelpiece with water-lilies on it, and on each side of it hung a beautiful painted plate in a red velvet frame. All the ornaments stood on woolly green mats. But the best thing in the room was the harmonium. You worked with your feet and, when you played it, it sounded like church. David was fascinated, and when Nanny lifted him on to the stool and let him play he was so entranced that he forgot all about everything else and took no notice when they left him there alone. Sometimes he forgot to work his feet: then the music gave a dismal howl and stopped. Afterwards, all through tea, David remained dazed and his feet felt as if they were still paddling up and down.