The Golden Lion

by Pamela Haines

  ‘For the men only. On bicycles through the old part of the town. Wild but tolerated. No one thought anything of such lovable eccentricity. My sister and I and many of the other women, we would sit at Latour’s eating ices and watching these wonderful men set off. Perhaps a fish supper at Bucci’s after … A paper chase. I ask you … Of course they had no wars to fight then.’

  The meal finished, and after coffee she invited Guy to walk with her in the garden. ‘We shall talk English,’ she said.

  Walking past an oleander hedge, then through an avenue of Judas trees, they came to a piece of statuary, a goddess with a broken arm, surrounded by tall cypresses. There was a scent of freesias. They stopped by a fountain, its inside filled with fern and papyrus. Beside it, standing sentry, was a stone lion. Nearby, begonias in urns grew like small trees. The Contessa walked slowly, with small careful steps, using an ebony walking stick. He took her arm as they climbed down to the fountain.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Dennison … and now tell me, honestly, what you think of Palermo? Of Sicily? It’s very pleasant for me to talk English … although your Italian is so excellent … Can you make anything of Sicilian?’

  ‘Not very much.’

  ‘Yes, it is difficult. It is after all a language, not a dialect.’

  She said, ‘It was only my mother who was English, of course. She detested Rome, dreaded my marrying a Roman. Hoped for an English match. She sent me to Princethorpe, a Benedictine convent, for five not very happy years. And then an English Season. But although I received two proposals, I would not … Then back in Rome for the winter I met the newly-arrived Count Tarantino-Falletta. A Sicilian, after all that. Oh, so romantic – you have to believe … He was very beautiful. That is why it’s so sad, what you see now.’

  She talked on. In the shade it was cool now. In the distance a bell tolled. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was later than he thought.

  ‘I am sorry we don’t meet your wife today, Mr Dennison. Her mother, Amelita – a strange girl. A strange child. Your wife is not like that? Too pretty, Amelita. No strength. This Varelli – he fell for the prettiness. And the money, of course.’

  They walked back slowly, taking another route past a wall thick with purple bougainvillea. As they came within sight of the villa, she said, turning a little towards him:

  ‘Sicily is a strange country, Mr Dennison. Very strange. Almost sixty years, and I am still a stranger. So as for you, don’t think that the Tuscan blood you have in your veins will be of any help. It may even hinder, giving you the false idea that perhaps you belong here more than an English person would. Do not fall into that trap.’

  He said nothing. As they approached the steps up to the terrace, where the guests sat now over drinks, she spoke to him again.

  ‘I must warn you,’ she said. ‘There are times, many of them, when it is best to know nothing. Of anything. For most of my life here, I have known nothing. It is best. You understand me?’

  ‘I understand,’ he said. I am my mother’s son, he thought. Remembering suddenly the first shock of that knowledge. Shouting at Maria in the kitchen of Moorgarth. Not wanting to discuss it all, only to shout and curse. His violent sickness after … The ghosts of his non-existent Tuscan parents beckoned him – in the light of the Contessa’s remarks. How Laura would smile when he told her.

  Father Clemente had spent the last four days at the Villa working on family papers in the library. Now it was arranged that Guy, who would pass within half a mile of it, should take him back to Sant’Anselmo.

  They spoke Italian. The priest had little or no English. Guy found him pleasant, urbane, relaxed.

  ‘You must visit us, Mr Dennison. As a religious house, it is not large. Only perhaps five of us, and mostly scholars. We lead a quiet, very private life. Preaching, of course. Confessions, spiritual guidance.’

  He told Guy:

  ‘I am interested to know what friends you have made since your arrival. You meet people outside your work? But naturally – we have seen you today at the Villa Tarantino-Falletta … So sad, the Count. Once a most able man … The family history, it is absorbing. I’m very privileged. One of the many old families … These are the people closest to God’s heart. The old aristocrats – and the peasants.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Guy asked. ‘Has He told you?’ He felt irritated by a tired aperçu he had heard many times before.

  ‘Lukewarm,’ Father Clemente said blandly, ignoring the annoyance in Guy’s voice. ‘Aren’t most of us lukewarm? Sitting in the middle. What did Christ say? That he would vomit us forth from his mouth … Whereas the peasants here, with their appalling poverty, their suffering – and the aristocrats with their power, their influence, their potential for evil, and often, their riches.’

  He told Guy, ‘Of course our island should be separate. What can the mainland, far away Rome, Milan, Turin, do for us? Even if it means turning to America for aid … America has been for our poor people the Eldorado, has it not?’

  They were almost at the priory now. Guy had a glimpse of a baroque building in grey stone, surrounded by cypresses, juniper trees.

  ‘You won’t come in and visit us?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ he had told the priest yesterday. ‘I must get back to my wife.’ And he had found Laura rested, as she’d promised. Tonight, dining at the Di Benedetto apartment, she looked, though pale and fragile, very beautiful. She wore a cream crêpe dress from Rome, bought by him – which soon would be too tight. I shall never tire of her looks, he thought. I shall never tire of her.

  Ruggero and Virginia Di Benedetto, new friends. Laura and Virginia seemed to get on well together and he enjoyed Ruggero’s company. Their children, Marcello and Natali, at three and a half and nearly two were too old for Silvi – but there would surely be others.

  Marcello was running in and out of his mother’s arms, Natali laughing and squeaking from behind her father’s chair. Guy, who loved children, did not mind. Soon enough their nurse would come for them.

  The only other guest was a doctor, a bachelor. Paolo Anello. Guy did not take to him, distrusting for some reason his precise, conventionally good-looking face, disliking his small, very neat white hands. His cutting, slightly high-pitched voice he found unattractive. He was speaking now:

  ‘… The whole concert is to be sixteenth-century early baroque,’ he was saying. ‘Serio has particularly chosen Antonio II Verso’s Lasciatemi morire. It’s for five voices … II Verso was a native of Palermo …’

  Guy felt himself distanced, the words floating round him. It was enough that Laura was happy, well, enjoying herself. Then he realized he was being addressed:

  ‘You were at the Villa Tarantino-Falletta yesterday?’ Dr Anello said. ‘Patients of mine, of course … So sad about the Count. He was a most able man in his day.’

  Ruggero said, ‘Apparently Mother Church was there also. In the shape of one of the Sant’Anselmo Dominicans.’

  ‘And how well they preach. I believe they’re much in demand … Excellent scholars too. The Prior is a man of immense learning.’

  The conversation drifted on to politics. Then to the elections. And from there, to bandits.

  ‘One wonders if there’s a small village or town without them,’ Ruggero was saying. ‘They’re endemic here … One born every minute. It happens so easily. Hunger, you steal some food, kill a carabiniere – carrubi as they call them – to avoid being apprehended – and what’s your future? Nothing for it but to go into hiding.’

  Guy asked idly, ‘A place called Monteleone – is it anywhere near here?’

  Ruggero spread wide his hands. ‘Never heard of it.’

  Laura looked over at Guy. He thought she half frowned. Did she fear he would give away his origins? (As if I would, he thought. This secret told to so few …) Strangely, he had had no desire to visit, and until this moment, no interest whatever in Monteleone. And perhaps it was as well, for Maria had said, telling him the name of her birthplace, ‘Yes, you have relatives t
here. But the break is complete. If some still remain … I would rather you did not.’ Now, tonight, he did not even know why he had asked.

  But yes, Dr Anello was saying, yes, he knew of it. ‘Just another hilly village. Massive emigration. It’s got nothing to distinguish it from any other … Why do you ask?’

  ‘Someone asked me about it – in connection with something they’d read.’

  ‘There can scarcely have been much to write.’

  That night he dreamed of the stone lion in the garden of the Tarantino-Falletta villa. He was standing talking with Ruggero and Virginia, when he saw it growing suddenly smaller until it had shrunk to almost nothing. ‘What’s wrong with the lion?’ he asked. Both Ruggero and Virginia laughed, but good-naturedly. Then as he began to walk away, he saw that the lion followed him. It had grown again. And was growing. Already it was twice its original size. He began to run. But he could not run fast enough. His legs, growing heavy, rooted themselves to the ground. The lion was coming nearer. He was icy cold with fear. Then suddenly he saw a church in front of him, with a great ornate silver door. It opened for him – and he was safe inside. He began to search for where he could hide.

  And then the bells began.

  13

  ‘I cried for you,’ sang Helen, ‘Now it’s your turn to cry over me… What do I do with my hands – oh, Eddie …’

  ‘Start again. Every road has a turning, that’s one thing that you’re learning. Pick up at what a fool I used to be …’

  ‘… I’ve found a heart just a little bit truer, I cried for you, now it’s my turn to cry over you– I’ve got the words wrong now –’

  ‘Nothing. You’re wonderful. Wonderful. I thought maybe–let’s leave that one. I’ll sing from the piano with you. Want to try Two Sleepy People?

  ‘… dozy little fellow, drowsy little dame … hey, sparrow, don’t worry about your hands, just sing.’

  The door opened. ‘My God, still at it,’ Maria said. ‘Outside, you know, it’s an English summer. Can’t you go in the Park or something? Get out. It’s even quite warm.’ She took off her hat, shook her hair, then gave Helen one of her loving smiles.

  Eddie said, ‘I’m not tiring her, it’s her wanting to go on, working me to death.’

  ‘And you love it–’

  ‘Of course.’ He swung round from the piano, smiled at them both. Flash of the old Eddie. Coaching Helen had given him ‘something to get up in the morning for’, as Maria called it. And how he needed that. Although there was some work now, long stretches went by when either there was nothing, or it was work so low down on the bill as to be insulting almost. He haunted the agencies. Old friends were kind and put him in the way of what work they could, but since all he wanted was to be the Eddie Sabrini of the nineteen-thirties …

  Maria explained: ‘He was away too long. Once a door has shut like that, it’s not so easy to open it again.’ Almost to herself, she added: ‘And especially, most especially if you’ve lost the key.’ She told Helen:

  ‘We must keep his morale up. He’s as good as he ever was. Or– almost. It’s the times that are different.’

  The one thing Helen didn’t like to remark on was his age. The truth was that Eddie was rather old – at least forty-five, and going grey. Maria too, had grey ‘wings’, but they made her look more smart and distinguished.

  They loved each other, of course. She tried to forget that sometimes she heard them quarrelling. (Everybody quarrels. Ronnie’s parents do it in public, at the supper table– really angry with rude words.) Once she overheard Maria say: ‘I don’t care what or who, Eddie, if I don’t have to see it… I never supposed the leopard had changed its spots. It doesn’t matter if they’re mature women or silly little girls, so long as it’s kept away from Helen.’ She tried to forget. She remembered how she had thought of the three of them as the Holy Family. Maria, and the absent Eddie who was St Joseph. If there had been a daughter after Christ, then it could be Helen. Maria had once been Our Lady– the sad, serious part of her wanted it still to be so.

  She had loved being taught by Eddie two or three years ago. It had been done to help him after his illness, and both she and Maria thought that it had. She let him call them ‘crooning lessons’, it had a nice funny old-fashioned sound to it.

  Several weeks ago they’d started again seriously. Eddie had become really enthusiastic, which made Maria happy (which made Helen happy too …)

  At first he couldn’t decide who to model her on, or what style was best for her. He raved about a singer called Annette Hanshaw. He found some records of her singing, I’m a dreamer, aren’t we all, and Six feet of Poppa.

  ‘She sang around your age, sixteen, seventeen … Just listen to the rhythm, that little speech impediment– cute without being cutesy …’

  It was August 1948 now and she had taken the singing up again because she was rather at a loose end. She had left school in July after taking her Higher Cert.– the results would be out any moment. She didn’t expect to do very well– she’d done Maths only as a subsidiary, which was perhaps a mistake. However, Ronnie was going to do a secretarial course and she decided to join her in that. (Maria hadn’t thought that a very exciting thing to do. ‘But if you can’t think of anything else, it’s always useful.’)

  In late July she’d gone with Ronnie and her family to Cornwall for two weeks. Otherwise it would have been London all the summer. When she returned she thought of inviting herself up to Thackton where Uncle Dick might be. Maria didn’t want to leave Eddie. Then Aunt Dulcie and Jenny who were to drive around France for a month invited her to join them. She loved them both dearly– but she’d seen herself as the unwanted third: the hanger-on, with her schoolgirl French, sitting on the back seat reading the map wrong, or staying up with them at night, boring them– perhaps being asked out by a boy, and not allowed to go.

  Maria was very strict about all that. Eddie was too. Maria had explained. ‘We must know who it is, and where you’re going. And if we don’t know him, then he must come here and meet us first.’ So at Christmas she’d brought Tim Aylward (who’d turned out such a heavy-footed dancer that no amount of smooth good looks could make up for it) and at Easter, Bruce Middleton who was a friend of Ronnie’s brother, and had kissed her in the kitchen between the smart new refrigerator and the saucepan cupboard. Although it was all quite exciting, it would be much more so when she fell in love, which couldn’t be long now. One prayer she made, which Ronnie thought was really mad, crazy, was that it would be someone Maria and Eddie approved of.

  But at just seventeen, life was really opening up. She’d been allowed make-up (officially) since Christmas. In fact she’d been really pleased when her Max Factor was still on after Bruce’s kiss. She even let Maria give her advice, which puzzled Ronnie. ‘I can’t understand why you don’t get crosser with them both, they’re awfully strict.’ Helen explained that they weren’t her real parents so it was somehow different. How different? Veronica asked. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She couldn’t tell Ronnie about the rescue in the sweet shop– she hurried always over those wartime explanations. ‘They wanted children but she never had any, so that makes me very special to them. I just don’t want to hurt them– either of them.’

  Clothes had been a problem in her new grown-up life. They were still on coupons: meanwhile fashion had changed in a dramatic way with the arrival of Dior’s New Look last year. Lovely ankle-length full skirts and nipped-in waists filled her with longing after the skimpy short skirts and square shoulders–though she wondered with her lack of height if she might not look swamped. But her waist was so tiny, she yearned to nip it in further still, to swish with layers of petticoats. As ever, Maria came to the rescue.

  She enjoyed every minute of her lessons with Eddie. She would make him a snack lunch about one-thirty, then they’d have a cup of coffee and about the time any normal person would be out in the sunshine, they’d begin. The time would run away so that suddenly it would be six or six-thirty, and Maria ba
ck home again. They hadn’t even stopped for tea.

  This evening she rushed out to fetch Maria a drink. ‘I’ll pour you a sherry, Maria darling’ (reminder of how once she’d looked after Uncle Eric), ‘then Eddie wants you just to hear this number.’

  ‘I’ve really put her through the mill with this one.’

  ‘What’s it to be?’

  ‘Button up your overcoat.’

  ‘Eddie, where do you get them from? Right out of the Ark? Isn’t she singing any 1948 hits?’

  ‘OK. Sure, some of them. For what they’re worth. But she needs standards– to build up a repertoire.’

  They went on working together because she loved it (because he loved it), right until she began secretarial college in late September. She and Ronnie went off to Kensington every morning for nine o’clock. They both wore long fawn skirts with petticoats just showing, made up from materials in the July sales, and jumpers they had knitted from Vogue. Ronnie was jealous that Helen’s small bust had required less wool. They had used up every coupon in sight.

  Helen wasn’t at all sure about the college and wished she hadn’t committed herself. It didn’t help that Maria confessed, she had loathed shorthand and never mastered it.

  One afternoon at the end of October, just in from college, she was sitting at the kitchen table eating a currant bun and transcribing a shorthand exercise when the phone rang.

  Eddie said, ‘Hey, Helen, can you get up to Charing Cross Road now? Look, it’s really important. Can you do it in half an hour? and hey, Helen, you wear your best outfit– that little ballerina suit.’

  She said, her mouth full of currant bun, ‘Eddie– what, why?’

  But he cut in, full of urgency. ‘Look, sparrow, please … It’s your surprise, you remember I told you about a surprise?’

  She thought she would never forget the mixture of fear and excitement and exhilaration. Eddie, in the agent’s office, explaining, ‘All you’ve got to do is sing– just like at home. Give it everything you’ve got …’