‘The Questore may not have been afraid of me, but perhaps he had an uneasy sense that I would outlive him. It is an uncomfortable form of envy which is experienced only by those in a really secure position. I don’t feel it about you, although you are much younger than I am, because we live here in an equally blessed state of insecurity. You go first? I go first? Mr O’Toole goes first? It all depends on who is the best rat. That is why in a modern war old men read the casualty lists with a certain smug satisfaction. They may survive longer than their grand-children.’
‘I met a rat once in my garden,’ I said and allowed Mr Visconti to refill my glass. ‘He was standing motionless so as not to be seen in the flower-bed. His fur looked fluffy like a bird who has blown out its feathers against the cold. He wasn’t repulsive like a smooth rat. Without thinking I threw a stone at him. I missed him and I expected him to run, but instead he only limped away. One of his legs must have been broken. There was a hole in the hedge and he made for it very slowly. Once he stopped exhausted and peered over his shoulder at me. He looked rejected, and I was sorry for him. I couldn’t throw another stone. He limped on to the hole and went through it. There was a cat in the next garden and I knew he didn’t stand a chance. He had such dignity, going to his death. I felt ashamed of myself all that morning.’
‘It does you credit,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘Speaking as an honorary rat on behalf of other rats, I forgive the stone. Have another glass.’
‘I’m not used to champagne in the morning.’
‘There is nothing more useful that we can do at the moment than put ourselves in a good humour. My wife is quite happy in the house preparing for her party.’
‘Your wife?’
‘Yes, I speak prematurely, but last night we decided to marry. Now that the sexual urge is behind us, marriage presents no danger of infidelity or boredom.’
‘You lived a long time without marriage.’
‘Our life has been what the French call mouvementé. Now I can leave a great deal of the burden of work to you. My partner needs watching, but you can leave him to me. And I will look after relations with the police. The Chief of Police is coming tomorrow night. He has a charming daughter by the way. It’s a pity you are not a Catholic, he would make a valuable father-in-law, but perhaps we could remedy that.’
‘You talk as if I were settling here for life.’
‘I know that “for life” has a rather lugubrious sound, as in the term “imprisonment for life”, but here you know “for life” can so easily mean for a day, for a week, for a month. And you won’t die in a traffic accident.’
‘You speak as though I were a young man looking for adventure. O’Toole wants me to take the boat tomorrow.’
‘But you are one of the family now,’ Mr Visconti replied, putting his hand like a bird’s claw on my knee and digging a little with his fingers to retain a grip. ‘I feel towards you very like a father.’ His smile, which he must have meant to be a tender one, was not of the kind which one associates with paternity: the missing teeth ruined it. He must have seen me looking at his mouth, for he explained, ‘I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It’s the only form of jewellery a man can wear that women fully appreciate. Dear things, they like to put their lips on gold. Unfortunately the Nazis were acquisitive that way, and although I tried to remain on friendly terms, I thought it safer to have the teeth removed. There was an officer of the Gestapo who had a drawer full of teeth. I noticed that he always looked me in the mouth, not the eyes.’
‘How did you explain their absence?’
‘I told them I had exchanged them for cigarettes. I cannot think what I would have done without those teeth when I had to run away. Before I reached Milan and Mario’s Jesuits I was down to my last tooth.’
Aunt Augusta joined us from the house. ‘I could do with a glass myself,’ she said. ‘I hope it’s not going to rain tomorrow. I’m keeping the dining-room empty for dancing in case. Your room is looking quite furnished, Henry. Everything is a little slow because there are misunderstandings. I keep on using Italian words, and they don’t understand. I find myself looking round for Wordsworth to explain. He had a way of explaining …’
‘I thought we had agreed, dear, that his name was not to be spoken.’
‘I know, but it’s so absurd to inconvenience ourselves with jealousies at our age. Do you know, Henry, Mr Visconti was quite disturbed when I told him that I met Achille on the boat? Poor Achille. He couldn’t move for gout.’
‘I like the dead to stay dead,’ Mr Visconti said.
‘Unlike Pottifer,’ my aunt replied and laughed.
‘Who was Pottifer?’ I asked.
‘I was going to tell you at Boulogne, but you wouldn’t listen.’
‘Tell me now.’
‘There are too many things to see about.’
I could see that the only way to atone for my conduct in the restaurant of the Gare Maritime was to beg her to tell me. ‘Please, Aunt Augusta, I want to know …’ I felt like a child pretending interest in a story to delay bedtime. What was it that I was delaying? Perhaps the moment when I had finally to decide to catch the boat home, to find again my dahlias and Major Charge, to reply to Miss Keene’s letter, or to pass the border into my aunt’s world where I had lived till now as a tourist only. It seemed to me, watching the champagne from Panama shooting up its bubbles like balls dancing on water at a fair, inconceivable that I could abandon forever the region of Colonel Hakim and Curran and O’Toole …
‘What are you smiling at?’ Aunt Augusta asked.
‘I was thinking of O’Toole flying off today to Washington with the fake Leonardo.’
‘Not today. There are no planes to the north. He will be at the party tomorrow night. I asked him before he left. When once he had got what he wanted he was quite a charming man. Good-looking in a sad way.’
‘But perhaps today when he has time to examine the drawing …’
‘Mr O’Toole is no art expert,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘The man who did that forgery was a genius. He was quite illiterate. A peasant on the prince’s estate, but with a wonderful hand and eye. The prince never knew what a treasure he had living there until the police descended – that was in the early days of Mussolini – and arrested the man. He was making counterfeit notes. He had rigged up a little printing works at the back of the estate forge. They were extraordinarily good, his forgeries, but he didn’t know his own value, he gave them away to his fellow labourers. The prince could never understand how it was his people had become so prosperous – there wasn’t a labourer without a radio set. In socialist circles the prince gained a high reputation as an enlightened employer – they even wanted him to stand as a deputy. Then all the peasants began buying refrigerators and even motorcycles. And of course they went too far … somebody bought a Fiat. And the paper the forger used wasn’t up to the mark. When the man came out of prison the prince welcomed him back, and he was very careful to give him the correct materials for copying the Leonardo.’
‘Extraordinary. And you say he was illiterate?’
‘It really helped him with the forging. He had no preconceived idea for example of how a letter was written. A letter was simply an abstract shape. It’s easier to copy something with no meaning.’
The heat of the morning deepened, and the smell of flowers. We had nearly finished the bottle of champagne. The lotos land, I thought.
To hear each other’s whispered speech,
Eating the lotos day by day.
What were the lines about ‘the long-leaved flowers weep’? It was the trees which wept here, golden tears. I heard an orange strike the ground. It rolled a few inches and lay among a dozen others.
‘What are you thinking, dear?’
‘Tennyson has always been my favourite poet. I used to believe there was something Tennysonian in Southwood. The old church perhaps, the rhododendrons, Miss Keene sewing. I always liked his lines:
Then take the broidery frame, and add
>
A crimson to the quaint Macaw
although of course it wasn’t embroidery she did.’
‘Are you missing Southwood even here?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘there was another Tennyson and I find him here more than there.
Death is the end of life; ah, why should life all labour be?’
‘Mr Pottifer didn’t believe that – that death was the end of life.’
‘A lot of people don’t.’
‘Yes, but he took positive action.’
I realized that Aunt Augusta passionately wanted to tell me about Pottifer. I caught Mr Visconti’s eye and he gave a very slight shrug. ‘Who was Pottifer?’ I asked my aunt.
‘He was an income tax consultant,’ Aunt Augusta said and fell silent.
‘Is that all?’
‘He was a very proud man.’
I could tell that my remark in Boulogne still rankled and that I would have to drag the story out of her piecemeal.
‘Yes?’
‘He had formerly been employed by the inland revenue – a tax inspector.’
The sun shone down on the orange trees, the lemon and the grapefruit. Under the rosy lapachos grew the blue and white flowers on the same bush of jasmine. Mr Visconti poured what was left of the champagne into our three glasses. The transparent moon was dropping over the horizon. Somerset House, income tax … They were as distant as the Mare Crisium or the Mare Humorum on the pale globe in the sky.
‘Please tell me about him, Aunt Augusta,’ I said reluctantly.
‘He had the idea,’ my aunt said, ‘of prolonging his life after death by means of the answering service of the general post office. Not very convenient for his clients, of whom I was one. It was when I was separated for the second time from Mr Visconti by war. In Italy I had never been accustomed to pay taxes. They came as a rude shock to me. Especially as the little income I had was regarded as unearned. When I think of those endless tours, Rome, Milan, Florence, Venice before Jo died, and I joined forces with Mr Visconti …’
‘A happy day for me, dear,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘but you were telling Henry about the man Pottifer.’
‘I have to give a little background or Henry wouldn’t understand about the company.’
‘What company?’ I asked.
‘It was invented by Mr Pottifer to take care of my case and that of a few other ladies in my position. It was called Meerkat Products Ltd. We were appointed directors and our incomes (unearned indeed!) were put down as directors’ fees. The fees appeared on the books and helped the company to show what Mr Pottifer always called a healthy little loss. In those days, the bigger the loss, the more valuable the company when the time came to sell it. I never understood why.’
‘Your aunt is not a business-woman,’ Mr Visconti said with tenderness.
‘I trusted Mr Pottifer and I was right to trust him. During his years as an inspector he had developed quite a hatred for the office he served. He would do anything to help anyone about tax. He was very proud of his ability to circumvent a new law. He always went into purdah for three weeks after a new Finance Act.’
‘What was Meerkat and what did it produce?’
‘It produced nothing or we might have shown a profit. When Mr Pottifer died I did look up Meerkat in the dictionary. It said a small South African mammal like an ichneumon. As I didn’t know what an ichneumon was I looked that up too. Apparently it was something which destroyed crocodile’s eggs – I would have thought an unproductive occupation. I think the tax inspectors probably thought that it was a province in India.’
Two men came down into the garden carrying a black metal frame.
‘What’s that, dear?’
‘The barbecue.’
‘It looks enormous.’
‘It has to be if it’s to roast an ox whole.’
I said, ‘You haven’t told me about the answering service.’
‘It was most awkward,’ my aunt said, ‘income tax demands came in – exorbitant as usual – and every time I tried to telephone to Mr Pottifer I heard the answering service, “Mr Pottifer is at a meeting of the Commissioners. He will call you back.” This went on for nearly a fortnight, and then it occurred to me to ring him up at one in the morning. The answer was just the same: “Mr Pottifer is at a meeting of the Commissioners …” Then I knew something was wrong. It all came out in the end. He had been dead for three weeks, but in his will he had insisted that his brother should keep on the telephone and make an arrangement with the answering service.’
‘But why?’
‘I think the reason lay partly in his idea of immortality, but I think too it belonged to his war against the Inland Revenue. He was a great believer in delaying tactics. “Never answer all their questions,” he would say. “Make them write again. And be ambiguous. You can always decide what you mean later according to circumstances. The bigger the file the bigger the work. Personnel frequently change. A newcomer has to start looking at the file from the beginning. Office space is limited. In the end it’s easier for them to give in.” Sometimes, if the inspector was pressing very hard, he told me that it was time to fling in a reference to a non-existing letter. He would write sharply, “You seem to have paid no attention to my letter of April 6, 1963.” A whole month might pass before the inspector admitted he could find no trace of it. Mr Pottifer would send in a carbon copy of the letter containing a reference which again the inspector would be unable to trace. If he was a newcomer to the district, of course he blamed his predecessor; otherwise, after a few years of Mr Pottifer, he was quite liable to have a nervous breakdown. I think when Mr Pottifer planned to carry on after death (of course there was no notice in the papers and the funeral was very quiet) he had these delaying tactics in mind. He didn’t think of the inconvenience to his clients, only of the inconvenience to the inspector.’
Aunt Augusta gave a deep sigh, as ambiguous as one of Pottifer’s letters. I couldn’t tell whether it was of melancholy for Pottifer’s death or of satisfaction in having at last told the story she had begun in the Gare Maritime at Boulogne.
‘In this blessed land of Paraguay,’ Mr Visconti spoke as though he were adding a moral to the story, ‘there is no income tax and no evasions are necessary.’
‘Mr Pottifer would not have been happy here,’ Aunt Augusta said.
That night, as I was preparing to undress, she came to my room. She sat down on the bed. ‘It’s quite comfortable here now, isn’t it?’ she asked me.
‘Very comfortable.’
She noticed at once the photograph of herself which I had taken from Rob Roy and stuck into a corner of a looking-glass. A bedroom without a photograph always seems to indicate a heartless occupant, for one needs the presence of others when one falls asleep, standing around as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John used to in childhood. ‘Where did that come from?’ Aunt Augusta asked.
‘I found it in a book.’
‘Your father took it.’
‘I thought so.’
‘It was a very happy day,’ she said. ‘There weren’t many arguments about your future.’
‘Mine?’
‘And you weren’t even born. Now again I wish that I could know your future. Are you going to stay with us? You are so evasive.’
‘It’s too late for the boat now.’
‘There’s sure to be an empty cabin.’
‘I don’t think I want three days with poor Wordsworth.’
‘There are planes …’
‘Exactly,’ I said, ‘so you see I needn’t make up my mind. I can go next week, or the week after. We can wait and see how things go.’
‘I have always thought that one day we might be together.’
‘Always, Aunt Augusta? We’ve known each other for less than a year.’
‘Why do you suppose I came to the funeral?’
‘It was your sister’s funeral.’
‘Yes, of course, I had forgotten that.’
‘There’s plenty of time to make plans,’ I said.
‘You may not even want to settle here yourself. After all you are a great traveller, Aunt Augusta.’
‘This is my journey’s end,’ Aunt Augusta said. ‘Perhaps travel for me was always a substitute. I never wanted to travel as long as Mr Visconti was there. What is there in Southwood which draws you back?’
The question had been in my mind for several days and now I did my best to answer it. I spoke of my dahlias, I even talked of Major Charge and his goldfish. The rain began to fall, rustling through the trees in the garden: a grapefruit tumbled heavily to earth. I spoke of the last evening with Miss Keene and her sad undecided letter from Koffiefontein. Even the admiral stalked through my memories, flushed with Chianti and wearing a scarlet paper cap. Packages of Omo were left on the doorstep. I felt a sense of relief as a patient must feel under pentothal, and I let my random thoughts dictate my words. I spoke of Chicken and of Peter and Nancy in the Abbey Restaurant in Latimer Road, of the bells of St John’s Church and the tablet to Councillor Trumbull, the patron of the grim orphanage. I sat on the bed beside my aunt and she put her arm round me while I went over the uneventful story of my life. ‘I’ve been very happy,’ I concluded as though it needed an excuse.
‘Yes, dear, yes, I know,’ she said.
I told her how very kind to me Sir Alfred Keene had been, and I told her of the bank and of how Sir Alfred threatened to remove his account if I did not remain as manager.
‘My darling boy,’ she said, ‘all that is over now,’ and she stroked my forehead with her old hand as though I were a schoolboy who had run away from school and she was promising me that I would never have to return, that all my difficulties were over, that I could stay at home.
I was sunk deep in my middle age. All the same I laid my head against her breast. ‘I have been happy,’ I said, ‘but I have been so bored for so long.’
8
THE party was larger than I had conceived possible after seeing my aunt alone in the empty unfurnished house, and I could only explain it by the fact that not one real friend was present among all the hundred guests, unless one could call O’Toole a friend. As more and more guests assembled I wondered from what highways and hedges Mr Visconti had drummed them up. The street was lined with cars, among them two armoured ones, for the Chief of Police had arrived as promised bringing with him a very fat and ugly wife and a beautiful daughter called Camilla. Even the young officer who had arrested me was there, and he gave me a hearty slap on the back to show that there was no ill feeling on his part. (I had still a piece of plaster on my ear where he had struck me on the earlier occasion.) I think Mr Visconti must have visited every hotel bar in town, and the most passing acquaintances had been invited to bring their friends. The party was to be his apotheosis. After it no one would ever care to remember the former Mr Visconti who had lain sick and impoverished in a mean hotel by the yellow Victorian station.