by Ann Bridge
‘There’s the Duomo, anyhow,’ said Nicholas eventually.
‘That’s a sitter, with that great dome – I don’t count that!’ said Lady Kilmichael. Then she remembered something. ‘Oh, what did you think of the Memling? I saw you go in there this afternoon. Do you think it’s genuine?’
‘I didn’t see the Memling,’ he replied, rather gruffly.
‘Oh, didn’t you? I thought that was what you went for.’
‘No, I just went in.’ He paused for a moment, and then said, ‘As a matter of fact I was praying for you – or rather I suppose really I was praying for myself in connection with you.’
Grace Kilmichael was startled and moved – the colour stirred in her face; but her habitual impulse to ‘keep things light’ overtook her, and without giving herself time to think she answered, gently but quite easily – ‘I prayed for you in the Duomo too, one day – how funny!’
‘When was that?’ he asked, turning and looking at her.
‘That morning when I walked in from Komolac.’
He continued to look at her, doubtfully – she saw that some question was in his mind. But all he said, after a moment, was – ‘How nice of us to be praying for one another!’
He spoke with the most savage sarcasm, but she recognised the reason for that, and what it covered. She made some easy remark about liking to pray for people, and presently suggested a return – ‘We shall be late for dinner if we sit here any longer.’ But as they dropped down the long flights of steps and walked back to the hotel, neither made any further attempt at conversation. Grace was thinking that Dr Halther would have blamed her for her part in what had just passed. Nicholas had – with evident effort – made an opening, and she, as much from habit as anything else, had quite gently closed it again. Halther would say that this was wrong, that she ought to have made some response which would have enabled Nicholas to let it all out. She wondered – she watched the silent face beside her, and wished that she knew what he was thinking. Was he hurt, disappointed, rebuffed?
The course of Nicholas’s thoughts was more complicated. He had actually gone into the Duomo to look at the Memling, because she had so often told him to – but the curtains were drawn over the various altarpieces, and he had no idea which it was; he was tired – he got tired so easily still – and the small frustration checked his impulse; he had sunk into a seat, in the cool empty building, among the dimly burning lamps and tapers and the faint smell of incense. And there the thought of Lady Kilmichael had overtaken him, like one of those single large waves which on a still day sweep without warning far up the startled shore. Small pictures of her sprang out with extraordinary vividness – the way she lifted her head when she laughed, her wide eyes when anything surprised her, the soft tone of remonstrance in which she said ‘But Nicholas —’ when she disapproved. But for all the clearness of these pictures, she was somehow remote; her image stood on the edge of his life, her hands full of gifts – beauty and tenderness and gentle understanding, and a wisdom which he could not define, but which he felt to be necessary to him. She knew all about that difficult business, life; she had no angles or awkwardnesses; she was beautifully adept at human relationships, in which he was so frequently and so disastrously clumsy. All this, very confusedly and vaguely, he felt; but when his mind turned to himself, what had he to bring, what could he be but a recipient or an encumbrance? And in a quick movement of devotion, mixed with a vague confusion and distress about his personal relation to her, he had slipped to his knees.
But the prayers of youth do not always resolve its difficulties at once, any more than do the prayers of age and wisdom. When Nicholas left the Duomo both his affection and his perplexities were nearer the surface, more insistent, than when he went in – aspirations and renunciations and the sense of unworthiness and eager ardours swept round like bats in his head. When he paused on the cathedral steps, where he was seen by Lady Kilmichael, he said ‘Oh hell!’ twice, with a long pause between, before he went back to his painting. And when he later sat with her on the seat above the town, that sentence had broken stubbornly through his shyness and his reserve, driven by the urgent confusion within him.
Her answer, so readily and innocently given, had however provoked a fresh train of speculation. As he walked silently beside her, on their way back to the hotel, he was thinking: ‘I wonder why she prayed for me. Is it because she is a little fond of me too, or because there is something wrong with me? I wish I had asked – I wish it wasn’t so hard to talk to her now. I used to be able to say anything to her, but now all the things I really want to say are too difficult. There is plenty wrong with me, goodness knows – I’m selfish and I’m cowardly and I’m weak and I’m not honest. I can’t just be nice to people as she is – I’m always afraid: of giving myself away, I suppose. I was hateful to her when I was ill; I am still, sometimes. And it’s rather awful of me to want as badly as I do now to kiss her. I wish I didn’t – but I do. I suppose if I were honest and less of a coward I should tell her that I am fond of her. But I should feel a fool and presumptuous. And yet I want to – I feel such a liar going on saying nothing. I wonder if she guesses? If she doesn’t it might only worry her to tell her. What ought I to do about it? And even if I do tell her, what is there to do about it? I can’t marry her – and as she’s married I oughtn’t to love her, let alone kiss her. What is to come of it?’
So gloomily reasoning, his face (now red again beneath his yellow thatch) firmly set, Nicholas Humphries walked in silence beside Lady Kilmichael. Independently, they had both reached the same point – there was no outcome possible to love between them; for them, as them, there was no solution.
TWENTY-ONE
On the following morning Nicholas was sitting in the open space by Onofrio’s fountain, working on his picture of San Salvatore. It was just after twelve, but they were going to lunch late, as usual, in the Via del Levante; Lady Kilmichael was at work in the Franciscan cloister close by. He noticed with rather sour amusement that none of the shops had shut at noon – one of those cruises must be coming in; Lina Amandi’s jackets fluttered as freely and as brilliantly as ever before her door. And presently he became aware that the cruise had indeed arrived – little groups of people, obviously English, suddenly appeared in the Stradone, buying postcards, peering at M. Kraljic’s trays of earrings, and drawing one another’s attention to Mme Amandi’s jackets. The official guide passed by on the other side of the fountain to that where Nicholas sat, followed by a rather dejected string of sightseers, who listened bewildered to his mouthed monologue, uttered in a form of English which was quite incomprehensible; Nicholas, absorbed in his work, nevertheless vaguely noted the faces of his listeners, and grinned. He had seen the official guide at his official task before, and knew his utter incompetence – he was always rather sorry for the cruisers, as he called them – only why were they such fools as to cruise, instead of staying in places like Christians?
A tall and very distinguished-looking man, accompanied by a girl, presently detached themselves from the distant group; they stood together for a moment, evidently debating some point – then the man came firmly over towards Nicholas. Nicholas was not surprised – that frequently happened; when despair succeeded to bewilderment the more spirited tourists often abandoned the guide and sought information from him or Lady Kilmichael or any other obvious Briton who was obviously at home in Ragusa. He had personally conducted several tours before now. Sometimes it bored him, but he noticed while they stood arguing that this Englishman had a rather striking face, and that the girl, though too much made up, was exceedingly pretty.
The Englishman, approaching, raised his hat and said civilly – ‘I beg your pardon, but could you perhaps tell me what the date of this fountain is, and who built it?’ He indicated Onofrio’s domed structure.
The precision and intelligence of the question impressed Nicholas. The cruisers usually said ‘What is that?’ about any building which caught their eye.
‘It was bui
lt by Onofrio di la Cava, about 1437,’ he said. ‘He brought the water to the town from the Gionchetta.’
‘Was he a Dalmatian?’
‘No, he came from Naples,’ said Nicholas.
The Englishman looked critically at the fountain, pointed out the carving of the little empanelled masks on it to the girl – Nicholas had already decided, from the resemblance, that she was his daughter – and then turned to the young man again.
‘Is there any more of this la Cava’s work here in Ragusa, do you know?’ he asked.
There was the other fountain, Nicholas told him, down on the Piazza – ‘but that’s rather pulled about now. And two of the capitals in the loggia of the Rectors’ Palace are his, too; two beauties.’
‘Where is that – the Rectors’ Palace?’
‘Right down the Stradone’ – he pointed – ‘and then turn to the right.’ But as he spoke he began to put his things together; these people were intelligent, much more so than most – he might as well go down with them. ‘If you’ll wait one moment, I’ll come and show you,’ he said.
The Englishman politely urged him not to trouble – if he would tell them the way they could find the palace.
‘Yes, but then you won’t know which Onofrio’s capitals are,’ said Nicholas, getting up. ‘One second’ – and he picked up his canvas and carried it across to Mme Amandi’s shop. He often left it there, and with a cheerful word deposited it now, propped on a carved chest, along with his easel and his paintbox. Then he rejoined the tall Englishman and the girl.
‘There doesn’t appear to be any guidebook to this place; it makes it difficult to find out what to see,’ the man observed, after thanking him, as they walked down the Stradone.
‘No, there is no local one,’ Nicholas replied.
‘And as for that alleged guide—!’ said the girl.
Nicholas laughed. ‘I know that guide! He can’t really speak English at all, and he hardly knows anything either. I always pity the tourists who fall into his hands.’
‘They ought really to arrange to have a competent guide, since seeing this place is specified as part of the cruise,’ the Englishman pursued, rather severely. ‘We are very fortunate, but that is not the fault of the Company.’
‘There’s the Orlando Statue,’ Nicholas observed, as they reached the Piazza.
‘Who was Orlando,’ the girl asked.
‘Roland – the name’s got turned round. They say Charlemagne had them set up in all the cities of the Empire, as a sort of trademark. There’s one in Bremen still, too.’
A number of other tourists, seeing an explanation of the Orlando Statue in progress, drifted up and joined the group. Then Nicholas led his two acquaintances on to the other Onofrio fountain, gathering further followers by the way; by the time he reached the Rectors’ Palace a small tail of respectful listeners was hanging on his words wherever he went.
Lady Kilmichael meanwhile had also been involved in the tourist influx. The guide, with an increasingly dispirited following, came into the Franciscan cloister, where she sat painting the garden, seen through two of the graceful small arches of Mycha di Antivari’s exquisite double colonnades. On her canvas the roses and oleanders flowered; beyond the shadowed columns, flatly painted with the brush, the thick leaves of an orange tree, glittering in the high sunlight, were indicated sharply with decided strokes of the palette knife. She, too, glanced pityingly at the bewildered and unhappy tourists, but she was absorbed in her work and paid little attention till she heard a voice behind her say, in a low tone, but with evident astonishment – ‘Oh Daddy, look! How frightfully good! Do you think we might ask to see it?’
She glanced round. A rather soldierly man in his sixties was standing a few paces away, a girl beside him, both looking towards her picture. Lady Kilmichael’s face was at all times singularly unintimidating, and when she turned the girl came forward, with civil hesitation, but a good deal of self-possession, and said – ‘Might I look? It’s such interesting treatment.’
Lady Kilmichael winced a little inwardly at the cliché, but politely gave her permission, and the pair came and examined her picture. ‘My daughter paints herself,’ said the soldierly man, in complacent explanation. The girl expressed a rather intelligent admiration and asked some quite sensible questions; she clearly had all the jargon at her fingers’-ends. And presently – ‘Are there any pictures to see here in Ragusa?’ she asked. ‘It’s so hopeless – there’s no guidebook, and that guide man really can’t speak English at all! We’ve only got today here, and it’s quite distracting not to know what there is to see, let alone where it is. Is there anything one really ought not to miss, do you know?’
Thinking, like Nicholas, how insane it was to ‘do’ Ragusa on a cruise at all, Lady Kilmichael nevertheless became helpful; given the folly of cruising, it was very sensible of the girl to want to be put onto the essentials at once. The Nicolo Ragusanos were the main thing to go for, she said, because you could see him hardly anywhere else; they were in the little chapel of the Dance, out towards Gruz, and in the Dominicans’ church. And finding that her new acquaintances had no idea where the Dominicans’ church was, she, like Nicholas, took pity on their helplessness; and having given her canvas into the charge of a somnolent friar, led them off down the Stradone to see the Nicolo Ragusanos. On the way she paused to show them the Sponza, or Customs House, with its completely Venetian façade and pious Latin inscription; more stranded tourists, seeing intelligible information going free, fell in behind the soldierly man and his daughter and followed, listening eagerly, when Lady Kilmichael at length led them up past the Porta Ploce and into the Church of the Dominicans.
By the time Nicholas had finished showing his party the Rectors’ Palace it was after one o’clock, and he bethought him that he had better go back to the Franciscan cloister and pick up Lady Kilmichael for lunch. He was sufficiently pleased with his two principal companions to suggest that they might possibly lunch together; he was even more attracted by the incisive intelligence of the man than by the prettiness of the girl. Accordingly, having shaken off the tail, except for one very persistent Bishop and his wife, he took the others along to the Franciscani. But no Lady Kilmichael was to be seen – except for a drowsy friar or two, the cloister was empty; her canvas stood in the corner – she must already have gone to the Via del Levante, he supposed. The Bishop and the Englishman, delighted with the delicate colonnades, began to question Nicholas, and they wandered slowly round together. The girl strolled off by herself across the garden – presently she called out, in rather a startled voice – ‘Poppy! Come and look at this!’
They went over to her. She was examining Lady Kilmichael’s picture intently.
‘Poppy, I would swear this was one of G. S.’s! Do look!’
‘Nonsense,’ said the tall man, without looking – ‘you know she’s in Greece.’
‘We don’t know she’s in Greece,’ the girl protested. ‘We’ve only Lady Stick-in-the-Mud’s word for it, and anyhow that was ages ago. Look at those flowers, Poppy! There’s that red outline round the lit-up petals – no one but her does them like that.’
The Englishman adjusted a pair of pince-nez, and looked, remarking ‘No one but she,’ as he did so.
‘And she’s used the knife for those leaves and the brush for the buildings, just like she always does,’ the girl persisted, pointing, and disregarding his correction of her grammar. ‘Poppy!’ she gave a little skip of excitement – ‘I bet you a hundred dinars, or whatever they are, that she is here!’
‘It isn’t unlike, certainly – but it’s impossible really to recognise pictures in that way,’ the Englishman said. Nicholas had meanwhile been buttonholed by the Bishop, and could only give half an ear to this conversation – he noticed, however, that the Englishman looked slightly disturbed. The argument went on – the next words he heard, as he detached himself from the Bishop and moved back towards them, were – ‘Well, if that isn’t a Stanway, I’ll eat my lipstick!’
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br /> ‘I can tell you with certainty that it isn’t a Stanway,’ Nicholas said with authority, coming up.
‘How?’
‘Because the artist happens to be a friend of mine.’
A sound of voices, and footsteps on the echoing flagstones proclaimed the entrance of another party into the cloister, but neither Nicholas nor the girl, intent on their argument, looked round.
‘Well, who is your friend?’ she asked, with a sort of undefeated uppishness.
‘Her name—’ he was beginning repressively, when a sort of strangled ejaculation interrupted him. The Englishman was staring over their heads as if he had seen a spectre. Nicholas looked behind him. Round the corner of the cloister, followed by a string of tourists, came Lady Kilmichael.
The Englishman’s pince-nez dropped and smashed on the flags with a high tinkling noise. He paid no attention. ‘Good God, it is Grace!’ he said. The girl had turned too, and stood staring – after a moment ‘What did I say, Poppy?’ she demanded triumphantly, and darted down the cloister crying ‘Mums!’
Nicholas was so much taken aback by all this that for a moment he never observed who Lady Kilmichael’s immediate companions were. He stood, startled into complete absorption by the beauty of her gesture as she put her arms round the girl, while the Englishman, still ignoring his broken glasses, walked slowly towards them. Nicholas stooped to pick up the pincenez; as he did so a voice cried ‘Daddy! There’s Nicky!’ He looked up and saw Celia and his Father.