by Mavis Cheek
‘We’ll pay,’ he said.
Usually I wouldn’t have bothered asking, just gone ahead, but I suppose I needed to talk to someone and Brando, though many things that were not estimable, was wise. He was at the bar, Harry’s of course, and moaning about how it had become so commercial and dull. He was on – it sounded to me – his third or fourth Bellini. It also sounded as if he had not been too successful in his particular brand of pursuing happiness. We talked for a bit about a few ideas he had and then he muttered something about this thing having hit me hard, to which I muttered that, well, yes it had. There was a moment’s silence and then a sharp sigh and, ‘Come over,’ he said imperiously. ‘Get on a plane and come over now. Spend a couple of nights here. You can get the juice at source. I insist.’
It was completely unexpected. And, when the identity of my next visitor was revealed, I could only wish he had made the offer a little sooner. I’d have been up and away before you could say coward.
Just after he uttered the words my doorbell rang out. It has a penetrating ring. ‘Christ – what’s that?’ he yelled down the phone.
I peered around the blinds, half drawn, a sign of the way I felt about my life. ‘My mother,’ I sighed. ‘Goodbye, dear Brando, and possibly forever.’ Brace yourself, Georgina, I told myself. Brace yourself. For I knew the line of those lips intimately. They bespoke a rather dependable lack of compliment from mother to daughter. Taking my own counsel, I braced myself.
And then she was in.
Eight
Gleek: to joke, jibe or banter.
Nathaniel Bailey’s Etymological English Dictionary, 1749
SINCE MY FATHER died my mother had developed an even greater fondness for Robert – she being one of those women most assuredly of the previous generation who liked to have a man in her life and to respect and cosset him. Until now this had not been a problem – certainly not for Robert – but not for me either. It is very nice to have a mother who approves wholeheartedly of one’s marital choice even if she does not approve wholeheartedly of the daughter who married him – and Robert never turned it into anything sickening.
Under current circumstances, though, this bond was tricky. Her visit was hardly likely to be an ad hoc social call – my mother did not do things like that. After my father died she was very particular that she would not be a burden to either of her children. Since Laurie, my brother (whom I describe to people not in the know as the original confirmed bachelor), lives in Glasgow this was less of a struggle where he was concerned, whereas we only lived about five miles away. But she had stuck to her undertaking. Sometimes I had to practically go and yank her protesting carcass out of her house and into the car for a Sunday lunch. But not today. No – she had got on a bus to come over, she had not telephoned first, so something was definitely up. And although she sat on the sofa looking just like Mum, grey coiffed hair, minimal make-up, camel coat with matching scarf tucked in, nevertheless there was something about her that said this was only the outer shell. Inside she was a big cat.
‘Tea?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Coffee?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Gin?’
This achieved not even a smile.
‘Sit down, please, Georgina,’ she said.
And in my own home, too.
I sat.
A little part of me was excited, pathetically, at the thought it might have been Robert who had alerted her to all not being well, but really I knew it was Tassie. If there was one strange thing that was happening in among all this moral struggle, it was the discovery that I really was frightened at the thought of losing Robert. I realised the enormity of what he saw – my breaking my loyalty. And let’s face it, Nina, without loyalty what is love? Stand by your man is no different from stand by your woman. What would I feel if Robert had done this to me? If he had suddenly gone all po-faced and said that there were greater things in life than love and loyalty and refused to do something I desperately wanted him to do? I would have felt betrayed. No doubt about it. Well, too late now.
I stood up again. This was ridiculous. This was my own house and whatever had happened I was in charge here. I tried to help my stone-lipped mother off with her coat but she gave an impatient gesture with her hand and I sat down again. It seemed likely that she had rehearsed it all on the bus coming over and was not to be denied.
‘Tassie rang.’
‘I guessed that.’
‘She told me that you’d refused to go away with Robert.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘To Florida.’
‘That’s also true.’
‘Can I ask why?’
‘You can.’
‘I know it isn’t really any business of mine.’
‘No it isn’t.’ Well, it was the truth. Hang me for a flock of sheep as much as a single puny lamb.
She ignored this. She can be very wise and diplomatic, my mother.
‘Why, then?’
‘Because I didn’t want to go and I was fed up with pretending that I did. I hate the whole thing, have always hated it apart from at the very beginning, and it seemed stupid to be my age and still telling lies about the way I feel. Robert doesn’t like going very much either which is part of the reason. I wasn’t prepared to lie about it any more, and he was. You should try it – watching the men make competitive twits of themselves while we women sit there wearing silly smiles and even sillier outfits. And anyway, I have work to do in Venice. For Brando. I have to fly out there. Tomorrow.’
At the mention of his name she closed her eyes momentarily. When she opened them again she looked at me with that unwavering pale blue stare. I’d seen that over the years as she dropped it on doctors, teachers, my father, Laurie (seldom) and me. Here it was, back on me again.
‘Is there someone else?’ she asked crisply. Then she looked around the room as if expecting a bank manager to fall out of the corner cupboard. ‘You’d better say if there is and get it over with.’
‘There is not,’ I said. ‘Never was, never will be.’
‘Then what the blue blazes are you doing sending that poor man off on his own? He’s simply doing his job as he has always done – and now he’s surrounded by all those American women and far away and feeling miserable. Tassie says he’s feeling very angry and very sad about it all.’
So she had ignored my advice and spoken. Viper. But I liked the use of the word sad. I tried to stifle the reminder about the other women and failed.
‘What women?’ I asked.
‘American women,’ she said, with a tone of voice and a look that intimated they were vagina dentata personified. You can take the girl out of the mother, but you can’t take the mother out of the girl. We thought alike. No doubt American women, like any others, could be very sympathetic when they found a man being sad. In a black leather jacket and black jeans, I reminded myself. Wallow in Venice, wallow in self-pity, it’s all the same.
‘Well, he should try to understand.’
‘Understand what?’
‘That we should be more truthful in life. We can’t expect the powers that be and the world around us to be honourable if we fib, lie and cheat all the time. And Robert had been going on and on so much about politicians and the rest not telling the truth that – well – I agreed.’
At least she blinked. I wasn’t sure if I’d got my message across. She smoothed the empty seat next to her with her ageing hand. There was the wedding ring, thin and familiar beneath Dad’s mother’s solitaire. There were the perfectly shaped nails, free of varnish. Those were the hands that had been around me all my life, and usually – certainly since the advent of my children – they were on my side. Not now. The hand stopped its smoothing and hovered, fingers spread. ‘Well,’ she said sourly, ‘I knew it was something stupid but I had no idea how stupid.’ Upon which she slapped that hand back down on the cushion with a pumpff. ‘You are just being wilful and silly.’
I will not rise to the wo
rd stupid, I thought. ‘Great oaks out of small acorns do grow,’ I said, primly. ‘Someone has got to stop the rot. Remember – it only takes one good man to remain silent and –’
The hand made an irritated silencing gesture. ‘Is it the menopause?’ she said, lowering her voice and sliding a little way along the sofa to be nearer to my chair.
How nice it would have been to say – yes – yes it is – only hormones – nothing to worry about.
‘No, Mum – it’s the conscience. It’s the fact that everywhere you turn people are lying, bending the truth, cheating – and I hate it. But I can’t complain if I also do it.’
‘Have you tried oil of evening primrose? It did wonders for me when –’
‘It is NOT THE FUCKING MENOPAUSE.’
She slid very rapidly and in a very upright manner back along the sofa.
‘Oh sorry. Oh God,’ I babbled. ‘Oh, sorry to swear. But it’s making me feel miserable, too.’
‘I think it will be something to do with the meno—’
I gave her a look. She had the good sense not to go on.
‘I thought he’d understand.’
‘Don’t be such a silly baby, Nina. You’ll lose him. He’s a good-looking man. He’s in his prime. And he’s interesting. According to Tassie he’s very hurt indeed. Doesn’t understand any of it. And you are risking everything by doing this. Everything.’
I stared out of the window. A John Lewis van was delivering something to the house opposite. The elderly Mrs Parker was in her garden clipping her little hedge. A dog walker went by with three small dogs on leads. All very normal. All very desirably normal. Life going on. I looked back at my mother. Her lips were pinched, her eyes searching. She was silently saying, Well?
I wanted to say that it didn’t say much for our marriage if he fell at the first hurdle of doubt. But I didn’t – because I think I agreed with her. I was risking everything and it was unjust and I wished I had never started it. But I wasn’t going to admit it. If that was questionable honesty, it was all right by me. ‘Thank you, Mother.’
‘Will you go? To Florida?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m going to Venice.’
‘Then there is another man.’
‘Only Brando. I promise.’
She leaned stiffly into the back of the sofa and blew out a sigh. ‘That man. I knew him when he didn’t have two ha’pennies to rub together. And now he wears those appalling leather trousers and minces around like a – like a –’
‘Like a what?’ (As a matter of fact, he has not worn them for several years – even old queens know when to hang up their bondage gear.)
I could see, suddenly, the shaft of reason penetrating those pale blue eyes. And it was this. If I, Nina’s mother, go banging on about Brando and his sexual proclivities and vivid colour sense and his leather gear, and Nina is determined on this truth-telling business, she may well mention Laurence and I really do not want to admit the truth about him. As long as I don’t know the truth then he might suddenly convert to being normal …
That is what I read there and that, I am sure, was right.
‘Well, if you will, you will,’ she said. ‘Nothing’s to be done with you once you get a bee in your bonnet. I should know. And I’m only trying to help.’
‘Well, you’re not. There’s nothing you can tell me that I don’t already know. And despite it all, it’s good to feel I’m doing something honourable. Even if it does cock up my life. So please don’t interfere any more.’ I kept my back as straight as she kept hers. Who would blink first?
She looked hurt. Her mouth puckered again. I felt a little thrill of victory.
I smiled, nicely. It was over.
‘I’ll drive you home.’
‘When do you go – to Italy?’
‘First thing tomorrow. I want to be home in time for Robert. He gets back on Saturday.’
‘You can bring me some of that fruit mustard I like. You get it on the Rialto.’ Peace was declared.
She undid the buttons of her coat and pulled out the familiar Liberty scarf. Thirty years old, at least. I knew because I’d bought it.
‘And I think I will have that gin before I go. You, Nina, are a fool. Worse, you are a stubborn one.’
I stood up. ‘I’ll join you.’
‘Make yours a small one if you’re taking me home.’
At the door I turned. ‘Stubborn? Really? I wonder where I get that from?’
She had the grace to glimmer a smile.
Nine
Flahooler: a generous, big-hearted, good-natured person, with a sense of gaiety.
Michael Traynor’s The English Dialect of Donegal, 1953
HE WAS THERE, waving a very large saffron handkerchief, as the motorboat came to rest on Dorsoduro.
‘I haven’t booked you into the same hotel as me,’ he said, ‘because …’
I looked with longing across the water to the Gritti Palace and others. But I knew what the because was all about. He wouldn’t want to dent any possibility by appearing to have a female in tow.
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m surprised you’ve been organised enough to book me into anywhere.’
‘I haven’t,’ he said. ‘Yet. I thought we could see what was available. Do you know a reasonable hotel near here?’
‘La Calcina, if they can fit me in.’ I sighed as if remembering. ‘Oh yes, I know it of old.’
Brando ignored the sigh which I thought was most unkind. ‘Well – you can deal with my case.’ We hopped across the water and set off along the Zattere, zizzagging our way through a smattering of extraordinarily dressed tourists who seemed quite unaware of how gross they looked in their holiday uniforms. I still wonder at the peculiar mechanism of the brain that links the word Holiday with Things You Wouldn’t Be Seen Dead In Usually. At least on this side of the Grand Canal there were fewer tourists. Across the water at San Marco the place was thronging. Seldom does any category of human being look sensible and pleasing in a baseball cap. Possibly golfers. And players of baseball, obviously. It also says something about the wearer but I’m never sure what. Avoid me at all costs, perhaps? Beneath the baseball hats there were an amazing number of very large ladies in short shorts, fat men in tight T-shirts, thin men in very white trainers, short ladies in check golfing trousers and worse. I never got it right, either, until I watched what Venetians themselves wore and borrowed their white linen with black. I never quite dared go for their other great skill, the mixing of the colourful with the quiet. You see it in Venetian painting, simplicity and wild colour mixed in perfect fusion, and you see it being worn with exuberant elegance in the bars and restaurants on a summer’s night. Today, looking back across the water, the indigenous Venetians stood out gloriously from these invaders as they wove their snooty way past the Doge’s Palace and down the Schiavoni. You can come and spend your money here, they seemed to say, but you’ll never be one of us. I sighed. With the spirit of Byzantium and the grandiosity of the baroque as their backdrop, the contrast between Venetian style and tourist absurdities was not even funny. At least Brando – despite his bright blue trousers and startling checked jacket – mostly navy and pink – looked eccentric rather than determinedly vulgar. I felt a rush of affection for him. ‘It’s good to see you,’ I said, quite genuinely. He looked slightly embarrassed at my warmth.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘about the hotel. I should have looked after you better.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, you should.’ He looked even more embarrassed and I was even more surprised. I’d never known Brando to be that unselfish, ever. And certainly not with me. ‘Let’s hope they’ve got a room. They should do. It’s only April.’
I didn’t enlighten him that I’d rather stay a good few vaporetti stops away from him. Besides, if it was good enough for Ruskin then it was good enough for me. I loved the Zattere.
Apart from a hall of mirrors in a fairground, Venice is the absolute doyenne of illusi
on. And full of clichés. La Salute still looked exactly like a cardboard cut-out against the April-blue sky, Tiepolo’s colour. I stopped for a moment to look up at her; what a creation, what confidence, what superior pleading for succour against plague and pestilence was in those curls and scrolls. There was a lesson for the miserable somewhere in there – I may be down but I most emphatically am not out.
‘We could have a Campari,’ said Brando, also stopping, and not without longing. ‘No rush, is there?’ We both stood at the waterside, looked up again, and stared. Salute was almost shimmering in her whiteness. He nodded at the restless shape of her. ‘Henry James said she was like some great lady waiting on the threshold of her salon, wearing a pompous crown. You can see what he meant.’
‘And the Venetians call the side bits her orecchioni – big ears – which deflates the pomposity a bit. Does it look as if it’s made out of cardboard to you? As if you could push it over?’
He eyed me slightly nervously. ‘No-oo,’ he said. ‘It looks very solid and secure.’
See what I mean? Venice is all things to all people, including having big ears and forever changing her skirts. We set off again. For some reason I was now pulling my case over the cobbles, up and down the steps of the little bridges, along the narrow callis and feeling very happy to be there, albeit with the happiness underpinned with melancholy. The usual state of a visit to Venice as far as I’m concerned. Too much beauty, perhaps.
When we came here, Robert and I, we stayed in La Calcina – and we mostly ate at the cheaper restaurants lined up along the Zattere and stretched out over the water on their pontoons. Aldo’s had been my favourite – they always managed to get the egg in a calzone – the most sensuous of pizzas – to be runny. But Aldo’s had gone – others had taken his place, and the whole area looked posher than I remembered it. Happily, some of the facades of the buildings were still peeling and crumbling, making the contrast that is also Venice – Plath’s ‘old whore petticoats’ worn beneath the watery city’s perfect velvet and lace.