He began also to plant the new chrysanthemum roots he had brought, working his way around the grave and, tidying up the border, tastefully arranged the colours; there were already a few nasturtiums, some asters in pink and purple shades and some dark green shoots the nature of which would not be revealed till the autumn. While he was at it he dug up, examined, and replaced two well-wrapped little parcels, one containing a huge sapphire ring and the other a pair of monogrammed cuff-links, these being objects he had picked up somewhere along the line from two earlier periods and encounters of his young life.
When the grave was ready, Lauro stood up and looked at the picture of his mother whom he remembered as deserving and energetic. Her huge voice had commanded until she died. She looked out unsmiling with her bold eyes and her short hair shining and fresh from the hairdresser’s. The costly angel who spread his wings above her little oval picture looked frightened by comparison, and the downcast eyes of that pale, church-going, feathered adherent of the New-fangled Testament seemed shiftily afraid to meet those of the living Lauro.
Nobody except the family was permitted to touch the grave. Lauro had taken on this work exclusively to himself; the rest of the family, from whom, in any case, he had nothing to fear, were all too busy elsewhere to tend it. His father had married again and lived in Milan; his two sisters were married with children and lived in Turin. One brother was married in America, and the other, who lived with his father in Milan, was a student. Once a year at the beginning of November, on the Day of the Dead, those of the family and their spouses who were not in America or, as it might happen, confined in labour wards, came to visit Lauro’s mother at the cemetery, bearing with them large bunches of long-petalled white and yellow chrysanthemums. These would be piled on the grave. The family would hover and weep, some lustily, some merely wetly. They would say how nicely Lauro kept it, how good he was, sparing them the expense of the cemetery-attendant’s services. They kissed Mama’s picture but did not touch the grave and asked no questions, not even of themselves. They felt Lauro was getting on quite well and admired his clothes. After the visit to the cemetery on the Day of the Dead the family would troop out with the other thousands of ancestor-visitors, get into their cars and proceed to a trattoria where they had booked a long table for a five-course family meal. Once a year.
Lauro looked around the cemetery, now, in early August, nearly deserted. Only one or two heads moved behind one or two tombstones. Lauro wrapped the leafy rubbish in a piece of his newspaper and the trowel in another. An attendant passed and wished him good-morning. Lauro looked around with pleasure. What secrets lay buried in these small oblong territorial properties of the family dead!
Chapter Seven
DEAR HUBERT,
We are leaving for Sardinia next week out of this frightful heat! I expect you too will have plans to go to the sea. After Sardinia I plan to return with Mary to the U.S. to spend some time on our own beautiful Atlantic beaches. Berto (my husband he looks forward to the pleasure of meeting you one day!) plans to join me on the Emerald Coast for a few weeks and then goes on to Le Touquet to join his brother. They plan to look over some horses he plans to buy. I plan to join him in Rome, then Nemi for a week on October first after which our plans take us back to the Veneto.
What I am writing about mainly is, if you can plan to vacate the house during the summer so that we can occupy it from October first, that would suit our plans. Will you let me know, please? Address your letter up till the end of August:
La Marchese Adalberto di Tullio-Friole,
Villa Stazzu,
Liscia di Vacca,
Costa Smeralda,
Sardegna.
After that my New York address (address me there Mrs Maggie Radcliffe as the apartment is still in my old name!) till the end of September. Please leave the key with Mary’s maid Agata, if you vacate in the month of August. Agata is coming in every day to feed the cat and dust. September, Lauro will be back so please leave the key with him if you have to vacate as late as the month of September. August would be preferable as this would enable me to plan for the decorators to come in from Rome in September so the house would be in shape for us.
A little bird told me you have been looking after my precious chairs! It was thoughtful of you and very, very simpatico. Bill me with the cost, of course. Maintenance is so very, very important.
One day when all the trivialities of life are settled I hope you will come and visit with me and Adalberto and tell us about your big project that you plan as I am sure you do. I hope it’s shaping up!
Happy summer!
As ever, love,
Maggie.
Hubert took a large whisky and two Mitigils. He reread the letter, paying less attention to what she actually said than to the tone and implication. A mass of ideas moved like nebulae in his mind. It was not until later in the day, after lunch, that he was able to isolate the germ: it was Maggie who, two days ago, had caused the gold coins to be placed in the teapot. The reason: plain guilt. But why buy him off in such an exotic manner?
And why, if she really wanted to make it easy for him to leave the house, had she sent so comparatively little? For, after all, small fortune though they amounted to, they were hardly the value and dimension of what one would call a settlement.
A settlement. In any case, for no money at all would he leave the house.
Again he read the letter. Over lunch he had read it out to Pauline Thin. ‘Does she always go on like that about her plans?’ Pauline said.
‘Not in conversation so much as in her letters. She has an epistolary style which denotes an hysterical need for stability and order. In conversation she counts on her remarkable appearance to hypnotize the immediate environment into a kind of harmony. She learned about planning at college, I should think. It’s a useful word in American education. She never understands the rules of anything, however, and her emphatic use of the word “plan” when she writes a letter is nothing but self-reassurance. Naturally, she will not stick to her plans. If she goes to Sardinia at all, she’ll probably only stay one night. That’s Maggie.’
Pauline said, ‘If you look at things in her light, you wonder why she doesn’t get her lawyer to press on with the eviction.’
‘She doesn’t want a scandal and it’s difficult to evict.’ Hubert, who was always impatient with others who failed to keep pace with his leaps of logic, conveyed impatience now.
Pauline found herself regretting the appearance of the gold coins; Hubert had been sweeter during their recent weeks of meagre living.
‘Well, we should still go very carefully,’ Pauline said. ‘It may be a trick to lure us into carelessness. We mustn’t leave the house unguarded in case they suddenly swoop and stage a takeover.’
Hubert considered this. ‘You’re a clever girl,’ he said.
‘And we should still be careful with the money. Are you going to sell the coins?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Hubert said, ‘I shall go into Rome and sell a few. You’ll have another present, too.’
‘Oh, no,’ Pauline said.
‘Why not?’ said Hubert. His mind was on the money he was going to collect for the chairs. He would have to leave early for Rome to give him time to collect the money comfortably and, in the event they didn’t pay in cash, change the cheque before the banks closed. It was an exceptionally hot August. He didn’t like Rome in the heat. ‘I’ll leave early in the morning,’ Hubert said.
‘Then I’ll iron those shirts of yours,’ she said, the wifely girl.
‘Shirts? I’ve got plenty of shirts,’ Hubert said absently, for his head had lifted to hear the sound of a car coming up the drive. A green Volkswagen that he did not recognize presently drew up at the door.
Pauline said, ‘It’s the Bernardini daughter.’ She stood beside Hubert behind the locked glass doors of the terrace.
‘Those people who live in one of Maggie’s other houses?’
‘Yes, she’s the daughter, Letizia.’
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Letizia had evidently brought a friend. She got out of the car in front of the house and went round to the other door. Presently, partly by persuasion and partly by force she brought out of the front seat before the eyes of Hubert and Pauline a tall lanky young man with a mop of reddish hair very like a giant chrysanthemum out of which peered a peaked and greyish face. He was trembling and wobbling, and obviously was in a bad way.
‘That’s Kurt Hakens,’ Hubert said.
‘Who?’