Two Lives

  ‘Once I sold shoes, Tom.’ I said that to myself, even though I spoke his name and glazed at his sleeping face. I stood leaning against the door, not immediately wishing to be closer to him or to wake him. I was still aware of the stockinged feet of women, of old shoes cast aside while I knelt and fitted whatever it was the women desired. As hot as ovens, the feet odorously perspired. ‘Swollen from walking, dear. Blown up beyond their size.’ They always bought shoes that were too small. The narrower fit, dear. Easily take the narrower.’ They stared down at the flesh that overlapped the straps and at the little fancy buckles. ‘Yes, I’d say they suit, dear.’

  Quietly I moved to where he slept. His mouth was drawn down a little as if in some private despair, but I knew this was not the reason. In sleep his forehead wasn’t wrinkled, his closed eyes were tranquil. The lips’ expression was only a rictus of the night.

  ‘Mr Riversmith,’ I whispered. ‘Mr Riversmith.’

  He stirred, though only slightly, one limb or another changing position beneath the sheet that covered him. I turned away, feeling I should not be too close when he awoke in case he was alarmed. I sat on the room’s single chair, half obscured by shadows in a corner.

  Again my thoughts were interrupted by moments from my past. In the dining-room of the public house the clerks roughly called out their orders. In the Café Rose I opened a leathery old volume and was lost in another world: Only reapers, reaping early, in among the bearded barley, hear a song that echoes cheerly… ‘Two shepherd’s pie ’n’ chips. A toad-’n-the-hole. A plaice ’n’ peas.’ You had to repeat the orders so that the clerks could hear; you had to catch their attention, otherwise you’d bring the wrong plateful and then they’d jeer at you, asking you how long you’d been at it. ‘Nice pair of nylons, them.’ Quick as a flash the clerks would get a hand on you. On the S.S. Hamburg I was in love.

  ‘Oh,’ Mr Riversmith said.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Riversmith.’

  He pushed himself up, leaning on an elbow. He was looking straight at the grappa bottle. He didn’t quite know what was what. My voice might have belonged to the sleep he’d come from. He didn’t see me in the shadows.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, Mr Riversmith.’

  I remembered how, time and time again, I had lain there in the heat of Africa, waiting for whichever man had money that day. Afterwards, downstairs, I would make coffee and cook. The men played cards, I smoked and drank a lemonade. People who didn’t exist – not the people of the books I’d found but people of my own – flitted in from somewhere: as I’ve said before, I’d never have written a word if I hadn’t known the hell that was the Café Rose.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Three, I think.’

  ‘Is something –’

  ‘No, nothing’s wrong.’

  I rose, smiling at him, offering further reassurance. I poured some grappa, for him and for myself. I offered him a glass.

  ‘Look, I don’t think I can drink just now.’

  ‘Tomorrow you’ll be gone. Take just a sip.’

  I returned to the chair in the corner. Tomorrow they’d both be gone.

  ‘I was fast asleep,’ he said, the way people who’ve been roused do.

  ‘I wanted to say I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘For this morning.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It matters to me, Mr Riversmith.’

  Even now, he wasn’t quite awake yet. In an effort to shake off his drowsiness he closed his eyes tightly and opened them again. He sighed, no doubt in a further effort to combat that lingering sleep.

  ‘I was almost dreaming myself,’ I confessed, ‘even though no one could be more wide awake.’

  He hadn’t taken a sip of his grappa yet. I thought the hand that held the glass might have been shaking due to his not being properly awake; I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Phyl didn’t care for Francine, and Francine is to be Aimée’s second mother. That’s all I’m saying, Tom.’

  Still the glass was not lifted to his lips.

  ‘You can’t blame Francine for hating Phyl, Tom. If you’re hated you hate back. It would be straining any woman’s humanity not to.’

  ‘My sister is dead. I’d prefer not to discuss this.’

  ‘I was there when her death occurred, Tom,’ I gently reminded him.

  ‘My sister’s child will be looked after by my wife and myself. To suggest otherwise is ridiculous.’

  ‘I know, Tom, I know. You will take Aimée back to Pennsylvania, and Francine will make efforts – an extra cut of lemon meringue pie, another chocolate cookie. And you will say, when things get dodgy, let’s go to the movies or let’s drive to Colorado to see the Rockies. You’ll buy Aimée a kitten; you’ll make excuses for the weakness of her high-school grades; you’ll say how pretty she is. But underneath it all Francine’s resentment smoulders. Francine is jealous of the attention you have to lavish on your sister’s child because of all that’s happened. Francine tries, but your sister spoke to her like that. Why should she be reminded of it now, day after day?’

  For the second time I witnessed his anger. Crossly, he said I knew nothing whatsoever about the woman he was married to and very little about him. How could I possibly predict Aimée’s grades at high school?

  I listened. I felt indulgent towards him, protective almost; he hadn’t experienced much, he hadn’t been much around; he didn’t understand how one woman can guess accurately about another. At the Café Rose men had insisted that I appeared to know only too well the women they told me about. ‘What must I do?’ the ivory cutter demanded. ‘Emily, tell me how I may have her.’ But when I told him, when I was frank and explained that any woman could see it coming that his violence would land him in gaol, he turned sullen and disagreeable.

  ‘I liked the look of Phyl, Tom.’

  ‘What you liked or didn’t like about my sister is without relevance.’

  ‘It’s just an observation. I only thought you’d care to know.’

  ‘You saw my sister on a train. In no way whatsoever were you acquainted with her. Yet you speak as if you knew her well.’

  Again I paused before responding. Then I told him about the meeting in the supermarket, the jars of mustard that had fallen when Madeleine reached for the herbs, the first cup of coffee she’d had with Otmar. I watched his face as I spoke; I watched his eyes, and was prepared to repeat what I was saying if they momentarily closed.

  ‘There is nothing left of Otmar now. No will, no zest. Otmar’s done for. That’s why he will remain here.’

  ‘I must ask you to leave me now.’

  ‘The old man’s done for too.’

  ‘Mrs Delahunty, I know you’ve been through a traumatic ordeal –’

  ‘It’s unkind to call me Mrs Delahunty, Tom. It’s not even my name.’

  The dark brows closed in on one another. The forehead wrinkled in a frown. His tongue damped his lips, preparatory to speech, I thought. But he did not speak.

  ‘Is there not a chance you would take, Tom? That a woman such as I can have a vision?’

  ‘The fact that my sister’s child spent some time in your house after the tragedy does not entitle you to harass me. I am grateful. My wife is grateful. The child is grateful. May I pass that message on to you, Mrs Delahunty? And may I be permitted to go back to sleep now?’

  I rose from the shadows and stood above him, my replenished glass in my hand. I spoke slowly and with emphatic clarity. I said I was unable to believe that he, a man of order and precision, an ambitious man, stubborn in his search for intellectual truth where insects were concerned, refused to accept the truth that had gathered all around him.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs Delahunty.’

  ‘It frightens you, as it frightens me. For weeks the German boy was like a blob of jelly. The General would willingly have put a bullet through his head. The child went into hiding. More had occurred than a visit to a dentist, you know
.’

  ‘Why are you pestering me in this way?’

  ‘Because you’re dishonest,’ I snapped at him. I hadn’t meant to, and as soon as I’d spoken I apologized. But his tetchiness continued.

  ‘You’ve pestered me since I arrived here. You talk to me in a way I simply fail to comprehend. I have said so, yet you persist.’

  ‘One day the child will know about that quarrel and what was said. One day she’ll reach up and scratch Francine’s eyes out.’

  He made some kind of protest. I bent down, closer to him, and emphasized that this wasn’t a change of subject, though it might possibly appear so. I described the scene in Otmar’s boyhood: the fat congealing on the Schweinsbrust, the bronze horsemen on the mantelpiece. I told him how Otmar’s father was led away, and how Otmar and his mother had listened to the dull ticking of the clock. I described the children of the fathers locked, years later, in another turn of the wheel, and Otmar choosing the shortest matchstick.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  What I’d said had caused him to sit up. His hair was slightly tousled. I told him not to be silly, to take a little grappa because he might feel the need of it. But he didn’t heed me. ‘What is this?’ he persisted.

  ‘I’m talking about what happened,’ I said. ‘I’m talking about people getting on to a train, and what happened next, and Quinty taking in three victims of a tragedy because they were conveniently there, because Quinty on all occasions is greedy for profit.’

  ‘You are insinuating about the German.’

  I poured myself another drink. I lit a cigarette. Before I could reply he spoke again.

  ‘Are you suggesting the German had something to do with what occurred on the train? Has he made some kind of confession to you? Are you saying that?’

  ‘How can we know, Tom, the heart and mind of a murderer when he wakes up among his victims? How can we know if fear or remorse is the greater when he lies helpless among the helpless? If my house is a sanctuary for Otmar it is his rack as well. Any day, any hour, the carabinieri may walk from their car, dropping their cigarettes carelessly on to the gravel. Any day, any hour, they may seek him in my garden. Does he choose this torment, Tom? We may never know that either.’

  He was listening to me now. For the first time since he’d arrived in my house he had begun to listen to me. When I paused he said:

  ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  ‘I’d love it if you’d take a little grappa, Tom.’

  ‘I don’t want any grappa. Why do you keep pressing drink on me? At all hours of the day and night you seem to think I need drink. You make appalling accusations –’

  ‘I’m only saying this might be so. Tom, no one can be certain about anything except the perpetrators – we both know that. No one but they can tell us if we’re right when we guess it was a crime turned into an accident.’

  ‘Have you or have you not grounds for making these statements about the German?’

  I paused. I wanted him to be calm. I said:

  ‘I had a dream, and when next I looked into those moist eyes behind the discs of his spectacles all of it was there. He lost his nerve. Or at the very last moment – perhaps at Orvieto railway station – he fell in love with her. In relief and happiness he stroked her arm in Carrozza 219, perhaps even whispering to himself a prayer of thanksgiving. Then came the irony: the accident occurred.’

  ‘A dream?’

  I explained that there was evidence, all around us, of what each and every one of us is capable of. There was the purchase of a female infant so that a man could later satisfy his base desires. A man who lavished affection on a pet could lay his vicious plans while an infant still suckled a bottle. Quinty scarred a young girl’s life. In the Cafée Rose my flesh felt rotten with my loathing of it.

  ‘The old man longed for unhappiness in his daughter’s marriage. You rejected your young sister in favour of a predatory woman. If Otmar is guilty there is redemption in a child’s forgiveness, and for Aimée a way back to herself in offering it. If Otmar is guilty the miracle may be as marvellous as the soldier giving away his food.’ Ages ago it had struck me that there was something odd about Madeleine’s journey. ‘Flights from Rome full,’ he would have lied.

  ‘You’re drunk, Mrs Delahunty. All the time I’ve been in your house you’ve been drunk. You wake me up at three o’clock in the morning with your garbled rigmaroles about executions and vengeance, expecting me to return to Pennsylvania without my niece just because you’ve had a dream. It’s monstrous to suggest that my niece should continue to grow fond of a boy you claim might be the murderer of her family. It’s preposterous to invent all this just in order to make a fantasy of the facts.’

  In that same manner he went on speaking. He said it was inconceivable that an innocent girl had been stalked in the manner I described. It was inconceivable that a total stranger had caused her to fall so profoundly in love that a relationship had been formed which on his side was wholly deceitful. An incendiary device could not have been packed into her luggage without her knowledge. Such a device could not pass undetected through Linata Airport. No terrorist attack could possibly have been planned with such ineptitude. And terrorists did not go in for changes of heart.

  ‘Please let me sleep,’ he said.

  Angrily I shouted at him then, all gentleness gone, not caring if I woke the household. I could feel the warmth of a flush beginning in my neck, and creeping slowly into my face.

  ‘You’re a man who always sleeps,’ I snapped at him. ‘You’ll sleep your way to the grave, Mr Riversmith.’

  I gulped at what remained of my drink and poured some more. His glass was still where he had placed it on the bedside table. I picked it up and forced it into his hand. A little of the liquid spilt on to his pyjama front. I didn’t care.

  ‘Hell is where men like you wake up, Mr Riversmith, with flames curling round their naked legs.’

  He said nothing. He feared my wrath, as other men have. I calmed, and wiped the spilt drink from his pyjamas.

  ‘You’re extremely drunk,’ he said.

  It’s always easy to maintain a person’s drunk. It’s an easy way for a man to turn his back. While I looked down at him in his bed a memory of the car-girls of 1950 came into my mind, I don’t know why. A drizzle was falling as they sheltered in doorways, their faces yellow in the headlights of the cars. I didn’t mention them because I couldn’t see that they were relevant. I prayed instead that at last he would understand. ‘Please, God,’ I said in my mind.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned in toward him, determined that he should visualize the picture I painted: the evening fireflies just beginning beyond the terrace, the General in a linen suit, Otmar among the shrubs of the garden, Aimée smiling. Survivors belonged together, no matter how eccentric it seemed. Normality had ceased for them: why should she not grow fond, and come to understand the bitterness there’d been? Why should she not?

  ‘Don’t come closer to me,’ he warned unpleasantly. ‘I’ve never given you this kind of encouragement.’

  My Indian dressing-gown had accidentally parted. Hastily he looked away. I prayed that a blink of light would enter his expressionless eyes, but while I begged with mine his remained the same. I said:

  ‘Among the few possessions that remained to Otmar after the incident I found a photograph of his mother.’

  A newspaper item that told of her death was pasted to the back of it. If the pillow-talk of the Austrian ivory cutter had not always been in German I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend a word. But I stumbled through it, and learnt to my astonishment that Otmar’s mother had hanged herself from the electric light, exactly as in my dream.

  But when I told him Mr Riversmith wasn’t in the least astonished. He stared blankly back at me, even though I repeated what I’d said twice to ensure that the order of events had clearly registered. Speaking carefully and slowly, I described the scene: how I had stood among Otmar’s last few bel
ongings with the photograph in my right hand, how I had taken nearly ten minutes to comprehend the German, how I had entered the salotto fifteen minutes later and found Otmar and the child playing their game with torn-up pieces of paper. My dream had been a month earlier, I said.

  The eyes of Thomas Riversmith didn’t alter. I did not speak again.

  If someone had had a camera there would be a record of the General with his hand held out and Mr Riversmith about to shake it. There would be an image of Signora Bardini still holding the sandwiches she had made for their journey, and Rosa Crevelli saying something to Quinty, and Aimée smiling up at Otmar. There would be one of me too, in a pale loose dress and sunglasses, still standing where Mr Riversmith had turned his back on me when I endeavoured to say goodbye.

  I wish a photograph had been taken because just for a moment everything was of a piece and everyone was there. Ten figures stood on the gravel in front of my house, each shadowed by other people, although the camera would not have caught that subtlety. Francine was there, and Celeste Adele, and Phyl and her husband and Aimée’s brother. The General’s daughter, his son-in-law and his wife were there, and Madeleine, and the girl whom Quinty had wronged. All sorts were there with me.

  ‘Mr Riversmith.’ Quinty beckoned, and Mr Riversmith walked towards the car. Aimée carried the hen that was my gift to her.

  The dust thrown up by the car wheels settled, and rose again when the machines that were to make the garden came. I watched them arrive, and watched while earth was turned, in preparation for the planting in the autumn. Letters from strangers also came that morning. I thought Oberon would never ask her. What a joyful outcome that was in the end! Mrs Edith Lumm of Basingstoke wrote that she and her husband, staying with her husband’s sister in Shropshire, had visited Mara Hall, although it was not called by that name any more. Her husband and his sister had pooh-poohed the idea that it was the house which featured in my story, but she herself was certain because of details she’d noticed, the maze for a start. Trimleigh Castle it was called now, being an hotel.