He certainly looks a good deal older than that. Perhaps it is the poetry.
He certainly looks a good deal older than that. Perhaps it is the poetry.
I have never much cared, she said, for men with umbrellas, but he was charming as a child. She looked out of the window and I looked too: a new housing estate in red brick straggled beside the line and on the hill beyond a medieval village crumbled away behind its ramparts.
Why was he crying? I asked.
He wasnt crying. He was laughing, she said. Something about Mr. Visconti. I havent seen Mario for more than thirty years, she said. He was a sweet boy then too sweet perhaps to last. The war came. We were separated.
And his father?
I never associated sweetness with Mr. Visconti. Charm perhaps. He was a terrible twister. Very generous with cream buns, of course, but one cant live on cream buns. Perhaps I am being unfair. One is apt to be unfair to somebody one has loved a great deal. And after all he was kind to me from the very start he found me my situation[135] in Italy.
At the theatre?
I cant think why you persist in calling it a theatre. All the worlds a stage[136], of course, but a metaphor as general as that loses all its meaning. Only a second-rate actor could have written such a line out of pride in his second-rate calling. There were occasions when Shakespeare was a very bad writer indeed. You can see how often in books of quotations. People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations.
I was a little shocked by her unexpected attack on Shakespeare. Perhaps it was because he wrote verse dramas like Mario. You were talking about Mr. Visconti, I reminded her.
I must admit he was very kind to me in Paris. I was quite heartbroken when I left Curran. I couldnt appeal to your father because I had promised Angelica to stay away, and when Curran left, after our final quarrel, he took everything except the cash in the church collecting-boxes and twelve tins of sardines. He had an unnatural passion for sardines. He said they calmed his nerves, that eating them was like pouring oil on troubled waters. There was enough in the collecting-boxes to pay my passage across the Channel and I was lucky to get this job of mine in the Rue de Provence. But I wasnt really happy there, and I was grateful to Mr. Visconti when he took me to Italy. The work, of course, was the same, but I enjoyed the travel from one city to another. And every eight weeks when I came back to Milan I enjoyed seeing Mr. Visconti. Cream buns were a great improvement on sardines. Sometimes too he would pop up unexpectedly in Venice. He was a twister, no doubt of it, but there are many worse people than twisters. She sighed, looking out at the dull scenery of the Po. I grew to be very very fond of him. Fonder than any other man I have ever known. Except the first, but the first is always a special case.
How did you come to retire? I asked. I was going to say from the stage, but I remembered her inexplicable dislike of the term. I had not forgotten Tooleys trouble, but I thought it only fair to let my aunt finish first with the memories stirred up by the sight of Viscontis son.
Your Uncle Jo left me all his money. It was quite a shock. The house, too, of course, but there was nothing to be done about that. Its still crumbling away near the autostrada. I settled the house on Mario when I had to leave Italy because of the war and I think he sometimes takes a woman there to spend a week-end in the ancient family palazzo. He even calls it the Palazzo Visconti (hes a bit of a snob: quite unlike his father). One day theyll want to build a connecting road to the autostrada and then the state will have to pay him compensation if he can show that the house was inhabited.
Why didnt you marry Mr. Visconti, Aunt Augusta?
Theres no divorce in Italy, and Mr. Visconti was a Catholic, even though a nonpractising one. He even insisted on my being received into the Church. It was his wife who had all the money and that hampered Mr. Visconti badly until he managed to get his fingers on most of what Jo had left me. I was very careless in those days and Mr. Visconti was very plausible. It was lucky that no one would buy the house that at least was left me for a time. He had a scheme for selling fresh vegetables tomatoes, particularly, of course to Saudi Arabia. At the beginning I think he really believed he would make our fortune. Even his wife lent him money. I shall always remember the conferences at the Excelsior in Rome with Arab notables in long robes who arrived with a dozen wives and a food-taster. Mr. Visconti would take a whole floor[137] in the Excelsior you can imagine that made quite a hole in Jos money. But it was very romantic while it lasted. I had my fun. Mr. Visconti was never for a moment dull. He even persuaded the Vatican to put in money, so we had cardinals for cocktails at the Grand Hotel. The Grand had once been a convent, and I suppose they felt more at home there. They were greeted at the door by flunkeys with tall candles, and it was a wonderful sight when the Arabs and the cardinals met, the desert robes and the scarlet skull-caps and all the bowings and embracings and the genuflections of the management and the kissing of rings and the blessings. The Arabs, of course, only drank orange juice, and the tasters stood at the bar sampling each jug and occasionally snatching a whisky and soda on the side. Everybody enjoyed these parties, but only the Arabs could really afford their fun, as it turned out.
Was Mr. Visconti ruined?
He pulled out in time with what was left of my money and what was left of his wifes, and to do him justice he had settled some of mine on Mario. Of course he disappeared for a while, but he came back after things had quieted down. The Vatican made a very profitable deal, you remember, with Mussolini, so that what they lost to Mr. Visconti seemed very small beer indeed[138]. He had left me enough to live on in a modest way, but I have never been very keen on modesty. Life was very monotonous after Mr. Visconti disappeared. I even visited Havana, as I told you, and afterwards I went back to Paris for a while (Mario was with the Jesuits in Milan) that was when I met Monsieur Dambreuse. But when the affair was over I came back to Rome. I always hoped that one day Mr. Visconti would turn up again. I had a two-room apartment, and I did a little part-time work in an establishment behind the Messaggero. Life was very middle-class after all the Arabs and the cardinals. I had been spoilt by Curran and Mr. Visconti. No men have ever given me more amusement than those two did. Poor Wordsworth! my aunt added. He was not in the same league.[139] She gave a very young laugh and laid her hand on my knee. And then Oh praise to the Holiest in the height, as Wordsworth is fond of saying I was putting in a little part-time behind the Messaggero when who should walk into the reception room but Mr. Visconti. A pure coincidence. He wasnt looking for me. But how happy we were. How happy. Just to see each other again. The girls didnt understand when we joined hands then and there and danced between the sofas. It was one oclock in the morning. We didnt go upstairs. We went straight out into the lane outside. There was a drinking fountain shaped like an animals head, and he splashed my face with water before he kissed me.
What was that half-time employment? I suddenly broke out. Who were the girls? What were the sofas there for?
What does it matter now? my aunt said. What did any of it matter? We were together again and he splashed me and splashed me and he kissed me and kissed me.
But surely you must have despised the man after all he had done to you?
We were crossing the long aqueduct through the lagoons which leads to Venice-Mestre, but there were no signs of the beautiful city, only tall chimneys with pale gas flames hardly visible in the late-afternoon sunlight. I was not expecting my aunts outburst.
She turned on me with real fury as though I were a child who had carelessly broken some vase she had cherished over the years for its beauty and the memories it contained. I despise no one, she said, no one. Regret your own actions, if you like that kind of wallowing in self-pity, but never, never despise. Never presume yours is a better morality. What do you suppose I was doing in the house behind the Messaggero? I was cheating, wasnt I? So why shouldnt Mr. Visconti cheat me? But you, I suppose, never cheated in all your little provincial bankers life because theres not anything you wanted enough, not even money, not even a woman. You looked after peoples money like a nanny who looks after other peoples children. Cant I see you in your cage, stacking up the little fivers endlessly before you hand them over to their proper owner? Angelica certainly brought you up as she wanted you. Your poor father didnt have a chance. He was a cheat too, and I only wish you were. Then perhaps wed have something in common.
I was astounded. I could find nothing to say in reply. I thought of leaving the train at Venice, but then there was Tooley and I felt responsible for Tooley. The squalid station wrapped us round with its dirt and its noise. I said, I think Id better find Tooley, and I went away, leaving the old lady glaring on her couchette. Only as I closed the door of the compartment I thought I heard her laugh.
Chapter 14
I felt glad that I had not lost my temper, but nonetheless I was shocked and needed a little time for reflection, so I climbed down on to the platform and began to look around me for food. It was the last chance before Belgrade next morning. I bought six ham rolls off a trolley and a bottle of Chianti and some sweet cakes it was not so good a meal as Chicken would have provided, I thought sadly, and what a dreary station it was. Travel could be a great waste of time. This was the hour of the early evening when the sun had lost its heat and the shadows fell across my small lawn, the hour when I would take my yellow watering-can and fill it from the garden tap
Tooleys voice said, Would you mind getting me some more Coke?
Theres nowhere on the train to keep it cold.
I dont mind warm Coke.
Oh, the absurdity of it all, I could have cried aloud, for now the man with the trolley wouldnt take a pound note, and I had to give him two of the dollars which I was carrying in my pocket-book against emergencies, and he refused any change, though I knew the exact rate and told him the lire required.
Julian did a fabulous picture of a Coke bottle once, Tooley said.