The Golden Lion

by Pamela Haines

  Guy wanted to ask, ‘And your friend, and his sweetheart or wife?’ He managed only, ‘Was your friend in the fighting?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Tomaso. Of course he wasn’t in that picture, at that party, he had already gone to the war … Laura, only a young girl then …’

  He asked, ‘How old is her – is Tomaso?’

  ‘Tomaso – oh, thirty-eight perhaps. He looks younger, I think. But Laura is eighteen, nineteen, I forget… Tomaso and Laura Varelli,’ he said.

  Beautiful month of October. The rain which had fallen earlier had changed the scorched drab soil to green. The air was clear. The sun still shone. That winter was in the wings was difficult to believe yet.

  He went to call on Gianni, who was out. His family seemed embarrassed by the visit. He wondered why he had come. All that day he had been sickening for a fever, which began that evening. While he lay ill with threatened malaria, Laura’s face haunted him. When he was hot, delirious perhaps, he thought of her cool skin. He would have liked to touch it, and be cold himself.

  But Mepacrine and fly spray and the rest paid off. It was not malaria. Nor was it typhus. But gradually it distracted him. When he grew better, he had almost forgotten her.

  He received an airgraph, (the address written, he thought, by his mother). The sender, Helen Connors. It was a chatty letter with an air of doing good, pen and ink equivalent of knitting for the troops:

  … The convent adopted a ship early last term and we each had to write to a sailor, I was quite lucky. Mine is called Bert and he was at Barnardoes, he doesn’t remember his dad but he had a lovely mam once, so he says we both know all about that, he wants to meet me after the war. Gabrielle’s a boarder and she said she was homesick and her sailor Jimmy said he was homesick and seasick. Are you homesick? Were you seasick? I’ve written four letters this week to boys on Active Service …

  He put it away with a smile, slipping it unthinkingly into the same bundle, fat bundle, of Sheila’s airgraphs. There had been three to read when his fever had lowered enough. In his billet on the waterfront, her photograph smiled back at him, wholesome, pure, loving, trusting.

  What happy times we’ll have when you get back, which I know you will, darling … The novena I did when you went in at Salerno, it was answered, wasn’t it? I ask Andy in my prayers to watch over you, darling. (I’m sure that he does anyway!)

  Eleanor wrote too of course, the most faithful of correspondents. She wrote of her busy life, her worries. Dick (my uncle, he thought), was still not making a recovery from his wife’s death. Eric’s death had not helped. It was thought possibly he was drinking too much.

  Of all the people she gave news of she seemed studiously to avoid his mother. She spoke of Dr McIntosh (forget, forget, that session of revelation. The storm of feeling after). He came to supper every week. She gave an account of her search for delicacies to feed him with. Talk of rations, clothing coupons. It was the most wonderful autumn for blackberries …

  In Naples they heard that at last the electricity supply was to be switched on. But information had been received, false as it turned out, that switching on would set off specially laid mines all over the city. Jeeps rushed round the streets, while loudspeakers instructed the whole population to evacuate. Nothing happened, and sometime in the afternoon over a million people made their way back home.

  Waiting to return, up on the high ground, he looked down on Naples. From up there he could not see the chaos and the grime. Could not smell it. Washed clean, a city of gardens, cupolas, towers … He wondered then if Palermo looked anything like this? In his fantasies, uninfluenced by photographs or paintings, it did. (In 1937 they need only have travelled a little further, he and Eleanor and Basil, to reach Sicily. Or would that perhaps have meant danger for their secret?)

  November came. The autumn sunlight grew thinner, chiller. There were warm days still but it was more often cold, appearing more so perhaps, because of the shadow over everything.

  By the end of the month some restaurants were open – all of them off the main streets and in theory out of bounds, but in practice not. He and Randall ate at several, but mainly at a small one called Zi’ Lucia’s.

  The atmosphere, the company, the sights and sounds, and the drink certainly, were all better than the black market food served. He would not have chosen chicken if offered. It was unlikely to be rabbit, almost certain to be cat.

  One chill evening, eating there, Randall said, ‘Remember reading about the Franco-Prussian War? Siege of Paris and all that? Delicacies like ragoût of rat. Why not ragout of rat now?’

  ‘Hundreds of reasons,’ Guy said, ‘and all of them guaranteed to put you off your meal … Didn’t they eat the contents of the Zoo? Jumbo and so on?’

  A brazier a few feet from them was burning some strong disinfectant – part of the war against typhus – bringing tears to the eyes and fits of coughing. Somehow the cooking smells, the brazier, the disinfectant and the sewers by the entrance all retained their separate pungencies.

  A couple of boys, aged eight or nine at the most, ragged, barefoot, ran among the tables, thrusting out a desperate grubby hand when passing Guy and Randall. When tearing his roll Randall dropped a crust, it was snatched up and eaten. A little girl carried a deformed baby, his head larger than hers, eyes gummed together, mouth drooling. She had no hands free, so thrust him towards Guy. ‘Yankee?’ she asked. The proprietor shooed her away with his apron.

  ‘That looks very queer fish,’ Randall said, pointing his fork at Guy’s plate.

  ‘Safer perhaps than your shellfish. I fill myself up with pasta. It suits me. And the pretty good Chianti puts a different complexion on it all.’

  ‘As does the violin,’ Randall said.

  A small and haggard man had struck up a spirited version of II Bacio. He swayed his way through the tables.

  ‘I hope he won’t sing,’ Guy began, looking a little over his shoulder in the direction of the violinist. At a table where some while before there had been two US officers, a couple were sitting, a flask of Chianti on the table between them. Laura and Tomaso.

  ‘Christ,’ he said to Randall, ‘I know them. That business at the apartment in the Carmine last month …’

  Tomaso had his hand over Laura’s.

  Randall said: ‘Quite a girl – if somewhat haughty. But stylish. A good-looker. He seems to think so too.’

  Guy said, ‘They haven’t seen us – me …’

  ‘Go over and speak to them,’ Randall said. ‘I shan’t steal your fish –’

  He walked over. The violinist was at their table, scratching at the final passage of Angel’s Serenade. Tomaso, looking up, smiling at Guy, dismissed the violinist with a gesture.

  ‘So, we meet again … You never called on Gianni? We are often there.’

  Beneath Laura’s shabby coat he could see heavy ruby-coloured velvet. A frock that must once have been both fashionable and expensive. This time he was afforded half a smile. He asked:

  ‘Everything all right for you both? No problems?’

  ‘Only the problems everyone has … We are lucky that we have our home, and that we don’t have to share it with too many … That is your friend with you?’

  ‘I’ll bring him over,’ Guy said. He introduced Randall. ‘Captain Randall Furness … Signor Tomaso Varelli … his wife, Laura –’

  Tomaso flung up his hands. ‘But what’s this? Wife?’

  Guy coloured.

  ‘Please, not wife, daughter,’ Tomaso said. ‘No, no, listen, it’s a compliment – that I look so young –’

  Laura said smoothly, ‘Or that I look so old?’

  ‘No, no – that he should think us married. I am thirty-eight –she, my darling little daughter, is nineteen. So you guessed, I married very young, and see how young it’s kept me. I pass for thirty…’

  Guy talked round it politely to cover his embarrassment, an embarrassment not felt by the delighted, amused Tomaso.

  ‘A drink. You’ll drink with us? Before
we eat – after we eat?’ But Guy and Randall had to get back. ‘Look, here is the address. You must promise to visit us. What day can you come? Tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday? … That’s settled then, we receive you Thursday …’

  He did not dare to look at Laura. Why? he asked himself. He was certain that as they spoke, she was not looking at him.

  The night of the visit. ‘Do you really want me tagging along?’ Randall asked.

  ‘What do you mean – tagging along? For God’s sake.’

  ‘Because you think the daughter a smasher – and you’re smitten.’

  ‘Randall, I have a girl. A fiancée almost. I don’t know how you dare –’

  ‘Don’t know how you dare, but you do. Look, visiting them isn’t going to stop you leading a monk’s life – if that’s what you want … But you were moaning only the other day about not meeting the natives. OK? Now those same natives urge you to call on them, and hey presto, you have scruples. You’re next door to mad.’

  ‘You started it, saying I was smitten …’

  ‘I was ragging. We’re not at school … But OK, I’ll come.’

  The Varelli apartment was in what had once been a good address. Now, more families lived there than had ever been intended. The courtyard was shabby, with dying plants, chipped and broken statuary. A concierge watched them balefully as they made for the stairs.

  Inside it was a pleasant surprise. Not wonderful, but better than they had hoped. Antiques, vases, chairs, porcelain, china. (One air raid, a bit of bad luck, he thought, and all these will go.) The elaborate coverings for the electric wiring were of faded torn silk, pale yellow.

  In one corner of the high-ceilinged room in a tapestry chair, an army issue blanket tucked round her legs, was a woman of perhaps forty. Prettily faded but recognizably Laura’s mother. The skin was unhealthily dark and dried, the eyes sunken, yellow-tinged. Her voice came as if from a distance. She held out her hand. It was not cold as he expected, but dry and weak.

  ‘Mother. Mother, as you see, is an invalid.’

  Coffee had been prepared. There were some small, rather dusty cakes. He had brought with him a Hershey bar from one of the American’s K rations. He watched fascinated as Laura broke it into pieces, laying them in a majolica dish. He could almost see the saliva behind her dry lips. Her eyes were fixed with desire. She offered him a piece.

  ‘No, no. It’s a gift. Eat it after we’re gone.’

  She protested, looking directly now at him. ‘Please. You are our guests.’

  ‘Eat it after we’ve left. It’ll go further that way.’

  She gave a little shrug, then looked away from him with a dismissive gesture.

  ‘You’re all so kind,’ the mother said in a faint voice. ‘The English have always been kind.’

  Laura looked at her coldly. The skin underneath her fine dark eyes was a little swollen in a way he’d noticed often these days of hunger. He felt ashamed of his own well-nourished self. (However little he liked the sausages, the mash, the duff, the copious badly cooked vegetables, he was not in want.)

  ‘Beloved,’ said Laura’s mother to her husband, ‘the smoke. The smell of the smoke.’

  Tomaso put aside his strong-smelling black market cigarette. He told Guy and Randall:

  ‘These are not Italian, of course, but what can you expect? You excuse me? A man must smoke what he can obtain, what is to be found.’

  He paid his wife exaggerated attention but in a manner Guy found odd, for it was the exaggerated attention a stranger might receive. Sometimes as he fussed around her, his eyes would suddenly seek out Laura’s. She would give him a small signal of approval.

  He and Randall were asked about themselves. They spoke of university – Tomaso had been at the university here, Philosophy, you understand, nothing very practical. It didn’t fit me for business, or the army. But, you see, it’s been all right. The secret is to forget the deep thoughts. I should have learned to speak good English. I think now, with forty almost here, it’s too late. I don’t have that flexibility.

  ‘You’re lazy,’ Laura said.

  Guy, remembering their first meeting, asked her, where did her excellent English come from?

  ‘You could guess, you can guess – an English governess. Of course.’

  Her mother murmured, ‘Mamma. Dear Mamma …’

  Tomaso said, ‘It was her grandmother’s idea, obsession – Her baptism gift. Formally, in writing. The finding, upkeep, delivery, of an English governess …’

  ‘Miss Travers,’ Laura said. ‘We called her La traversa- to her face in the end … She was rather nice.’

  ‘So nice, the English,’ Signora Varelli said. ‘My mother was a true anglophile. A friend of the Duchessa Sermoneta … a visit to England with her … in our Roman days.’

  ‘My wife is from Rome,’ Tomaso explained. ‘A large, energetic family –’ (but look at her now, he seemed to say). ‘So it’s strange, you see … Such a small family as this. Before, two aunts and a cousin lived with us. But the last of them died this spring.’

  ‘Better,’ his wife said, ‘better for Eugenio to die. He would have been condemned to a chair – even his bed. Who could wish that on anyone?’

  There was an awkward pause. Laura said she would ring for more coffee. What would they drink? Randall and Guy must say frankly what they thought of the wine. ‘We aren’t at all easily hurt. It’s fine if you criticize. Then we can obtain better for you another time.’

  Later they drank Strega. Tomaso said, ‘You’ve studied a lot of our literature? Laura here is very well read. She would wish to have gone to university. Now, we don’t know what will happen.’

  Guy asked her, ‘What do you like, who do you read?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, tilting her head back, ‘Leopardi, Dante, of course. That sort of thing. The usual.’

  ‘Cor!’ exclaimed Randall, outside the apartment. ‘What’s to be made of all that? Pathetic mother, beautiful daughter, absurdly youthful father. The scenario is – He can scarcely be bothered with his wife (though her family may have been occasionally useful), but his daughter reminds him of what he once loved about her, so he dotes on her and she on him. For the real thing, he’s got lots of lady friends, one lady friend? … None of the family gets enough to eat – I’d recognize that skin texture anywhere. In fact no different from thousands of their fellows, except they still have a roof and all those possessions, which doubtless they’ve started selling to eke out. Am I right?’

  ‘Masterly,’ Guy said. ‘If one cared a tinker’s curse for any of them.’ He yawned ostentatiously.

  ‘Not so smitten, then?’ Randall asked. ‘I’m not sure Signorina Laura mightn’t sound rather splendid, declaiming Dante. And very desirable.’

  ‘Who’s smitten?’ Guy asked, laughing.

  ‘Anyway – do we go back?’

  ‘We go back.’

  Darling Sheila,

  Thank you for all your letters! Three arrived at once, and now I think I’m up to date with all your news. Will try and make you up to date with mine. Not a great deal happens here except we are very busy trying to keep law and order, which doesn’t leave much time for social life, of which there isn’t much anyway. I’m with my own sort most of the time, or Americans. We meet very few Neapolitans except in the course of work. I can see this letter is going to be very dull. I wish you were here to talk to. And touch. Actually, Randall and I did call on a family yesterday and were entertained. I’d helped a friend of theirs over some business about an apartment …

  Unexpected work cropped up on the day of the next visit, and they had to postpone it. By the time the rearranged day arrived, Randall was ill in hospital with severe hepatitis.

  Guy went alone. It was to be the first of many visits. He tried never to come empty-handed. Neither his rations nor pay allowed him much in the way of extravagance, but usually he could manage to scrounge a little something. A single egg, some bread, a rabbit (at least he hoped it was – its head had not the roundness
of a cat’s skull). They were always pathetically grateful.

  The evenings took on a pattern. Sometimes Tomaso was out and would come in only as Guy was leaving. Cigarette dangling, smiling, eager: ‘How is my darling?’ A kiss for Laura. Other times he would be there with Gianni and his family or some other friend. Then there would be much laughing and talking, with no concessions made to Guy’s pure Italian – rapid cross-fire, exchanges, allusions over his head. Once Laura, noticing, beckoned him through to the dining-room. It was also a sort of library. Book-lined. There she took down a volume of Leopardi. ‘Why don’t we read together? Choose your favourite.’

  Alia sua Donna. He read:

  Cara belta che amore

  Lunge m’inspiri …

  And she, from L’Infinito:

  … Così tra questa

  Immensita s’annega il pensier mio …

  He found her voice very beautiful. And told her so. He said it gallantly, lightly.

  ‘So – I can continue then?’ She half-smiled in acknowledgement, and went on reading.

  She told him, ‘You read well yourself. And speak well … You have that lingua toscana in bocea romana, which some call perfect –’

  He was flattered. He and Randall, bracketed at first together for their excellent Italian, learned in the course of study and visits to Italy. He had told Laura something of his story – enough only to explain his connections with Italy. The Tuscan orphan, Aunt Eleanor’s determination that he should speak as nearly as he would have done had his mother taught him. (My mother, he thought. My mother.)

  Sometimes there was music. The gramophone with its great brass horn stood in the drawing-room, together with a cabinet of elderly records. The tone was crude and made a poor rendering of Artie Shaw’s ‘Who’s Excited?’ brought by Randall one day at Tomaso’s request. The voices of Rosetta Pampanini, Tito Schipa, Gigli, sawed the air thinly. Signora Varelli sighed from her chair, remembering mournfully her uncle on her father’s side, whose voice was so beautiful and who had studied with Fernando de Lucia – but who had not been allowed to make singing his career. Her thin hand lifted the wine glass to her lips.