The Italian Girl

  Otto looked and at once took in the essence of what had happened. He entered like a master, moving straight into action. In two strides he reached Flora. He took the trophy from her. The scissors clattered to the floor. Then he took one of her hands in his and slapped it hard with his other hand. I had often seen him do this when she was a child.

  Such a slap from Otto was no light matter. Flora reacted as she had done on the past occasions. Her face became crimson and her mouth opened in a roar of pain and indignation. I caught a confused glimpse of Maggie turning away with a dazed, rapt look, her hand again exploring the nakedness of her neck. The long strand of black hair lay tangled now upon the floor.

  I started to say something pacifying and explanatory to Otto. But Flora’s roars were deafening. Then I was suddenly aware that she was shouting out something; I heard it, and knew that the moment of catastrophe had come.

  ‘You fool, you fool! Don’t you know who goes to bed with your wife, don’t you know who seduces your daughter? Your dear little boy is a devil, devil, devil – Just guess who’s in bed all the time with Mummy while you’re making a fool of yourself with that slut – Don’t you know –’

  Flora’s voice faded into a choking incoherence of enraged tears. Otto had hold of her arm. He removed her, almost lifting her, to the space at the end of the table. She became still, suddenly terrified.

  Otto was very quiet. He looked a little puzzled and stupid like a large animal which has run into a confined space. He said slowly, ‘Flora, what are you saying exactly?’

  Flora mumbled, ‘It’s nothing – I was just – Oh!’

  Otto must have tightened his grip on her arm. ‘Flora, repeat what you said just now. At once.’

  I said, ‘Otto, please –’

  ‘Shut up. Flora –’

  ‘Oh, don’t, don’t! I was saying, Oh God, don’t you know – Mummy has a lover. Oh, let me go!’

  Otto released her. ‘But who – ?’

  ‘Who do you think? David of course.’

  ‘And you say – you too – ?’

  ‘Yes!’ Flora cried out, retreating now to the window, rubbing her arm. ‘Yes, me too! You have been blind, letting it all happen under your nose! Oh, you are stupid!’

  Otto stared down at the floor, and I saw his face become red and slowly wrinkle up with anguish like that of a child about to cry. I was desperately sorry for him, but much more afraid. I began to edge nearer. As I did so the door quietly opened and David Levkin came in.

  Levkin must have realized what had happened as soon as he entered, or more likely he had been listening outside for some time. Flora’s cries must have penetrated the whole house. He closed the door and leaned against it, touching it lightly with the palms of his hands. His face had an extraordinary peaceful radiance, like the face of someone quietly meditating some wonderful truth.

  Otto said, ‘Is this true, David, about you and – Isabel – and Flora – ?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  I swung the end of the table round out of my way, ready to interpose myself between Otto and David. Flora had mounted on to the window seat. But already Otto had advanced. The big wrinkled puzzled face stared down, the moist mouth gaping a little. I saw David stiffen, the palms of his hands turning outward in a gesture of donation, his expression radiantly blank. Then with a sort of savage gentleness Otto took him by the shoulders, set him aside, and went slowly out of the door.

  I stood in a stupid paralysis of surprise and relief. Then Maggie behind me said something which sounded like a command. I moved quickly after Otto. I passed him in the hall and began to run up the stairs. As I shot past him he began to run too, and we pounded up the stairs together, shaking the house. I reached Isabel’s door first, but not soon enough to get through and to bar it against him. I rushed into Isabel’s room with Otto close behind me.

  Isabel must have known what was happening. She told me afterwards that when she heard the raised voices down below she had composed herself for instant death. She was standing near the window, still in the blue dressing-gown, her hand at her throat. She had a forlorn terrified dignity. I saw her thus for an instant, and in the next moment I was stumbling, holding her up against me, thrusting her into a corner. I really feared that Otto might kill her with a single blow. There was a sound of breaking furniture and cries. Feet thundered across the room. I turned about and realized only a second before the blinding flash and the dreadful pain of it that I was the person that Otto was going to hit.

  15. Lydia’s Sense of Humour

  ‘Ed, old man, are you all right?’

  It was the next day. Black unconsciousness had come upon me with Otto’s blow. Black stars expanded into a total night. I came to myself lying on the bed in my own room. Otto must have dragged or carried me there. Otto and Maggie were having some sort of argument about concussion and cracked bones and X-rays which I eventually decided must relate to me. The pain in my face was extreme. It felt as if one side of it had been pushed right into the interior of my head. Attempts to open my eyes brought bright lights and shooting pains and no vision. I groaned, and then made out that Maggie and Otto were asking me questions, which I declined to answer. Somewhere a woman was weeping.

  The outcome, as I later discovered from Maggie, had been, for all but me, a felicitous one. Otto had stood gazing down at me where I lay sprawled amid the wreckage of Isabel’s furniture. Then he had fallen on his knees and seemed to be purged of his anger. I was got to my own room. Isabel retired behind her locked door. David Levkin had left the house. Maggie and Otto had spent some time tending me and arguing about whether to call a doctor. Eventually I was given some sort of soporific drink and left to fall asleep.

  I woke in the morning to more pain and to Otto’s large face hovering over me. ‘Are you all right, Ed?’

  ‘Not specially,’ I said. ‘You’ve probably broken about fifty-seven of those small bones. I shall never be the same again. Oh !’ He had put his hand gently on my cheek.

  ‘Maggie thought there was nothing broken. I see you have the good old-fashioned bit of raw beef there. Can you see out of that eye at all?’

  ‘I’d rather not try!’

  ‘Have you forgiven me?’

  ‘Of course, you fool. It was about time somebody hit me anyway.’

  In an odd way the incident had not only established between Otto and myself a sort of rapport which we had not had since childhood, it had also liberated in us both an extraordinary vitality which was almost like cheerfulness.

  ‘I can’t think why I did it!’

  I could think of a number of reasons why, but as I had no taste for psychoanalytical discussion I said, ‘What’s the situation this morning?’

  ‘Well, they’ve gone.’

  ‘They –?’

  ‘David and Elsa. Gone.’

  ‘You mean they’ve just suddenly cleared off?’

  ‘Well, I cleared them off. I’ve dismissed them both, sent them away, made an end of it. I was up all night. And not drinking either. At least not much.’

  I thought, poor Isabel. But of course it was better so. And poor Otto. ‘You’ve broken it all off, Otto?’

  ‘Yes. I realized it was simply an insane situation. Somehow after I’d bashed you I didn’t feel angry any more. I just felt what a bloody beastly mess it all was. There was Isabel crying and all the furniture broken and you lying there as if you were dead. For a second I did think I’d killed you. Then Maggie beat me up and I felt rather surprisingly rational after that. Then I knew it really was the moment to make a pretty fierce decision. After this thing about David it was absolutely impossible. I had to get rid of those two. And I had to do it quickly, there was no other way. They were insane-making for all of us. They are fairies, angels, demons. Of course, I knew it from the start.’

  ‘Angels, demons – yes.’ I felt a curious sadness.

  ‘So I wrote them a letter saying they must go away at once, and I put in a cheque for David’s pay, and Maggie took the letter
, and she said they were packing their things anyway. Then I went to bed and dreamt I was being followed round the house by an enormous black teapot. I tried to telephone for help but the telephone dial was made of tissue paper –’

  ‘But have they gone?’ I ventured to open my other eye, but shut it again promptly.

  Otto covered his face. His voice shook. ‘Yes, I think so. I don’t want to see them again, I just couldn’t trust myself to see either of them. They made me a mad person between them. One has got to put an end to madness somehow.’

  ‘And Isabel, have you seen her?’

  ‘No. I’m not sure if I can forgive Isabel. I’m so appallingly connected with her – ’

  ‘What about your own misdemeanours?’

  ‘I know. But it doesn’t work like that. Maybe we should forgive each other. But it’s not so easy. I just feel sick of the whole idea of her at the moment.’

  ‘It’s just as well you didn’t hit her, anyway. How’s Flora?’

  ‘Poor little thing. I had a long talk with her last night and she told me everything. God, I should have seen what was happening, I should have looked after her! I was just under a spell.’

  ‘Well, you’re disenchanted now. Back to real life. I think I’ll go home today or tomorrow. Since all the excitements seem to be over.’ I felt disenchanted myself, as if Otto’s blow had knocked all the remains of pretension out of me. I could do nothing for these people. I did not want to witness the pitiful efforts of Otto and Isabel to rebuild their wrecked relationship. I tried to sit up but my head was heavy with pain and any movement brought twinges of anguish. I struggled feebly while Otto pawed clumsily at the pillows.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘not quite all the excitements. What do you think of this, which I’ve just found.’ He waved a document in front of my face.

  I tried to focus my single eye upon it, and began confusedly to read it. Lydia had indeed exercised her sense of humour. I hereby will and bequeath all of which I die possessed to my beloved and faithful friend, Maria Magistretti.

  16. Elsa’s Fire Dance

  A solemn family group was assembled in Isabel’s room. The big fire, murmuring, climbing and subsiding with its own independent life, made the room alternately a bright and a dim gold, and also uncomfortably hot. It was still raining outside upon the cold dripping greenery of an English summer afternoon. The wreckage of yesterday had been piled in a corner and the place seemed less cluttered. Isabel, small, tired, neat in a plain grey coat and skirt, sat in an armchair. She had been weeping but was calm now, rather cold. She wore the detached rather weary air of an attendant secretary. Otto, wearing crumpled pyjamas under his sports coat and trousers, leaned at the mantel. A smell of damp singeing tweed pervaded the room. It occurred to me that Otto had been weeping too and I averted my eyes. I wondered if the changelings were indeed gone.

  Otto was saying, ‘Of course there’s no reason to suppose she’ll want to make any changes at all. After all she lives here, she’s always lived here. She’s got nowhere else to go. I fully expect she’ll tell us she wants everything to go on as before, and if so of course we should respect her wishes.’

  I paced by the window, caressing my afflicted eye. The place was hot and very swollen. The eye was almost entirely closed, though effort could produce a watery slit. A bluish-black stain had spread across my brow and down my cheek as far as my mouth. After a disturbed night I felt very tired and rather ill.

  ‘You are deceiving yourself,’ said Isabel ‘That’s what would be convenient. But she’ll tell us nothing of the sort. She has a will of her own though she’s kept it a secret. She’ll break out now, you’ll see. She’ll make us skip.’

  It was remarkable how quickly the family had reconstituted itself in the face of a threat to property.

  ‘I do agree with Isabel that she has a will of her own,’ I said. ‘But she’ll do nothing inconsiderate. I do think it possible she’ll insist on ignoring the will.’

  ‘After all, it is a bit odd,’ said Otto.

  ‘I see nothing odd about it,’ said Isabel. ‘I don’t mean she’ll turn us out of the house immediately. Oh no, she’ll be very reasonable and kind, but she’ll treat us as strangers. She hasn’t any family sentiment about us.’

  ‘ She must have,’ I said.’ She practically brought us up, Otto and me.’

  ‘She didn’t. I know Otto imagines she pushed his pram, but that’s a delusion. She only cared for Lydia. Lydia was good at making people her personal property.’

  This upset me very much. I certainly now, and with a fresh sharpness, saw Maggie as a separate and private and unpredictable being. I endowed her, as it were, with those human rights, the right of secrecy, the right of surprise. Yet at the same time I could not stop assuming that Maggie – well, that Maggie loved us. It struck me now that it was a rather large assumption and also somewhat unclear. Perhaps I was suffering from a delusion analogous to that of Otto. Our ancestral nurse was after all just a sort of legend. Maria Magistretti was quite another matter.

  ‘I can’t think why we didn’t find the will earlier,’ Otto was saying. ‘We looked in that place before.’

  ‘Is there much actual money, do you think?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, plenty,’ said Isabel. ‘Lydia was the meanest of women, but there was lots of money there. And she knew all about the stock market.’

  ‘Is the workshop paying its way, Otto?’

  ‘No,’ he said, avoiding my eye. ‘It’s been – subsidized, in these last years.’

  ‘It looks as if I’ll have to go out to work!’ said Isabel with a nasty laugh.

  ‘How can Lydia have been so bloody tiresome!’

  ‘Well, I’ve got no reasonable complaint,’ I said. ‘Sssh, here she comes.’

  There was a knock on the door. We all called ‘Come in.’

  A young woman entered, wearing a red dress. The short black hair had been expertly clipped, the serious dark eyes stared from a lean smooth youthful face. Maggie had acquired, what she had never had before, an exterior. She was no longer invisible. And as I stared in amazement at her metamorphosis I recalled suddenly, poignantly, from some much younger age a figure seen in the radiance of my childhood, a dark, slight tutelary goddess.

  Otto and I shuffled our feet, making that simulacrum of rising which standing men feel they have to make upon the arrival of an impressive woman, a sort of animal scuffle. Isabel pushed her armchair farther back with a harsh scraping. I cannoned into Otto trying to place a chair near the fire for Maggie.

  She sat down and regarded us.

  Otto began, ‘Maggie, I think you know why we’ve summoned you –’ This sounded rather menacing, so he hastily added, ‘I mean it’s all perfectly all right of course –’ This sounded too permissive. He blundered on. ‘I mean we just felt you might want to tell us –’

  ‘My intentions?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Otto, who had been fumbling and trampling during his speech, was clearly now in full retreat. He recoiled almost to the window. His big hands scuffled round the neck of his pyjamas trying to do up a non-existent button. It had not really occurred to him that Maggie might have intentions. It had not until very lately occurred to me.

  ‘I expect I shall return to Italy later in the year. But I have no immediate plans.’

  ‘You’ll return to Italy for good?’ asked Isabel.

  ‘Oh yes.’ Maggie answered with a sort of amused casual assurance.

  There was an awkward silence. Otto was chewing his knuckles. Isabel was coiled and lowering. I turned to look out at the rain.

  ‘As you may imagine,’ said Otto at last, ‘my mother’s will came as rather a surprise to us.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘What do you intend to do with the house and its contents?’ said Isabel.

  ‘Naturally I would give you a first refusal.’

  ‘I told you so,’ said Isabel. She got up and joined me by the window.

  ‘You mean,’ said Otto slowly, ‘that you are offer
ing to sell us the house?’

  ‘Well, that would be only proper, wouldn’t it?’

  Otto thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He added, ‘I’m in no position to buy it, unfortunately.’ Then he said, ‘Oh God!’ and began to laugh in a maniac manner.

  Maggie sat and smiled. She crossed her legs and tucked the red dress neatly round her. It was suddenly clear to me that she was acting a part and amusing herself at our expense. She meant nothing of what she said. I said impulsively, ‘You don’t mean this, Maggie. You must come to some sort of civilized arrangement with Otto. Lydia’s will was mad and unjust, as you know.’

  ‘Not mad. Unjust perhaps. But life is unjust. At least I have always found it so, Edmund.’

  Her cool words and her use of my name upset me. Surely she, she of all people, could not be unkind? She was where all kindness lived. I stared at her with fascinated doubt, while she regarded us calmly with a sort of diffused gaiety in her face. She seemed like a youthful general confronting some slow elderly junior officers.

  ‘Oh, don’t argue with her!’ said Isabel. She went to a chest of drawers and began throwing piles of white nylon underwear out on to the floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Otto.

  ‘Packing.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘what’s that noise?’

  A strange sound had just become audible far away in the house. We all looked at each other, listening. There was a dull rumbling which became a sound of running feet and confused voices. I felt a thrill of fear as if it were the onset of some appalling revolution. And for a second it seemed as if it must be connected with Maggie, must be the outcome of the obscure conflict in which we had just been engaged, must be her followers, her people come to take over the house. Isabel gave a cry of alarm. The running feet came nearer. Then the door burst open and Flora came running in. She was drawing someone after her by the hand. It was Elsa.