The Cleverness Of Ladies Part 2

She had tried, and had told her father that she remembered something a beautiful woman with a smell of flowery soap, and he had said, 'Yes! Yes! That's her, my darling, that's your mother.'

But she had seen a picture of the aunt, and the face in the picture and the face in the memory seemed to her to be one and the same person. She did not mention this to her father, though, because he was desperate that she should have a memory of her mother, his wife, who had died so unexpectedly and left him to raise their daughter. They had been a small family, just the two of them, but it did not matter. He lived for her, and told his friends that he would have died for her, willingly, several times over if necessary, to protect her from the dangers of the world.

'Look what's happened to Italy,' he said. 'All this lawlessness. I remember when this was the safest place in the world to be. Nothing ever happened in those days. Nothing.'

He was well off by the standards of Reggio Emilia, the town in which they lived. There was great wealth in Milan and Bologna, of course, and Parma too, with all its elegance. Reggio Emilia was much simpler than its well-known neighbours, but there was money to be made there too, and he had done well with the two shops that he owned in the centre of the town, in a street that led off the Piazza Cavour. One of these shops sold furniture and carpets, and the other was a dress shop that specialised in clothing for short, fat ladies.

'Now that we have so many Southerners up here,' Alessio said to a friend, 'there will be a big demand for dresses to fit squat ladies. That is the shape they are, these women from Naples and Sicily. Look at them.'

His friend thought about this. He was probably right; people from the south of Italy tended to be shorter than those from the north, but that was due to diet, was it not? Once they moved to the north, to take up jobs in prosperous towns like Reggio or Modena, their children would grow to be much taller. A good diet could make all the difference. It was diet, not genes.

Alessio did not believe this. He had a deep prejudice against people from the south, whom he believed to be responsible for all of Italy's woes.

'Look at Naples,' he said. 'Look at the proportion of the population down there who are involved in criminal activities. Do you know what it is? I'll tell you: thirty per cent.'

'Surely not?' said his friend. 'Surely not one in three people.'

'Amazing, isn't it?' said Alessio. 'Just think of it. Every third person in Naples makes his living from crime.'

Whatever his prejudices against Southerners might have been, Alessio got on well with the customers who came into his clothes shop. The squat ladies who came to buy outfits for weddings and christenings were also cheerful and polite, and he even found himself enjoying the company of the Southern a.s.sistants whom he had taken on. These girls were all involved with young men, whom they spoke about endlessly. The young men had names like Salvatore or Pasquale 'Typical names from Naples,' muttered Alessio. 'Look at the names in the newspaper reports of the trials in the criminal courts. Salvatore this, Salvatore that. They're the ones who commit all the crimes in this country. Typical!'

Fabrizia was used to these views from her father. She had heard them all her life but did not agree with them. She rather liked Southerners; she liked the way they talked, and she liked Southern cuisine. She had heard about corruption and the Mafia and the ongoing economic problems of the Mezzogiorno, as Italians called the south, but these did not interest her very much. 'n.o.body's perfect,' she said to her father. 'There's been corruption even in the Vatican, hasn't there? No, don't shake your head like that. What about your precious Christian Democrats? When they were in power what did you have? Honesty? Hah!' 40 Alessio did not mind hearing these views expressed by his daughter. He shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't care what your political views turn out to be, just as long as you don't marry one of those people. That's all. Don't end up marrying a man from Naples, a Neapolitan. I couldn't bear that. I really couldn't.'

At the age of twenty-three, when Fabrizia had finished her course at the University of Parma, she came home to help Alessio with his shops. She proved to have a good head for business, and within two years they had acquired a further three shops. These shops also sold clothes: one specialised in teenage clothing, and played loud music at its entrance; one stocked children's outfits and the third sold clothing for work waiters' outfits, maids' skirts and the like. All of these businesses thrived, and Alessio and Fabrizia became more and more wealthy.

Then one evening Alessio happened to see his daughter in a restaurant. It was not a restaurant that he was used to visiting, and both he and Fabrizia were surprised to see one another there. He, in particular, was taken aback by the fact that she had a young man with her. 41 The young man stood up politely when Alessio approached the table, and the older man knew immediately. The young man was a Southerner, a Neapolitan, no doubt. He could tell. He had never been wrong about things like that.

Alessio stared at the gold chain around the young man's neck, and the small charm it bore that was supposed to ward off the evil eye, a tiny gold cornicello, or horn. This would never be worn by anybody from the north, where belief in such things was looked down upon; Northerners, in his view, had no time for such superst.i.tions and quite rightly too.

There was a tense exchange of words between the two men, about nothing in particular. The young man was called Salvatore, and he had intense green eyes, which he focused on Alessio. The older man, however, could not bring himself to return this frank stare. He looked at his daughter instead, almost begging, as if to say to her, 'Please tell me that this young man is nothing to you, a casual friend.' But of course the look that she gave her father implied the opposite, and he knew then, with complete certainty, that this young man was to be his son-in-law.

He was not surprised, therefore, when Fabrizia came to him three weeks later and announced that she wished to marry Salvatore.

'I know what your views are about people like him,' she said. 'No, don't try to deny it, Father. You don't like Southerners. You just don't. It's so unfair on people like Salvatore.'

Alessio looked down at the ground. He could hardly deny the truth of her words; after all, he had never hesitated to express his views to her, even when she was a child. He had impressed upon her, time and again, the need to distrust those from the south. In fact, he had tried without shame to shape her views and now she had reacted by choosing to marry a Southerner. It had been a bad mistake on his part. One cannot tell one's children what to think, he had read; try to do that, and you'll lose them. They'll do the opposite the exact opposite of what you want them to do. Be careful. He had paid no attention to this advice, and this was the result.

He looked up at his daughter. You are so dear to me, he thought; you are my world. You and my shops our little world.

She looked back at him. I didn't choose him just because he's a Southerner, she thought. You imagine that I did, but it's not that. I love this man. Where he's from is nothing to do with it. Nothing. 43 They did not say a word. After a few minutes, she sighed and rose to her feet. Leaving the room, she glanced back at her father briefly and shook her head, as if in judgement. For a moment his heart stopped from fear at the thought of losing her, but then he said to himself, I shall fight back, because if you don't fight for what you have, for what you've worked for, then some Southerner is going to come along and take it away from you. The thought gave him comfort, and he stared at her defiantly as she left the room. All right! Marry him, and see what it's like.

Both father and daughter made an effort at the wedding. Alessio hired a hotel in the hills and paid for a lavish meal. He sat through the ceremony with a fixed smile, and kept this smile in place at the reception. He was seated between two of Salvatore's aunts, both of whom conformed to his vision of Southern middle-aged women. They were widows who had been married to men who had no doubt worn ill-fitting dark suits and old-fashioned black felt hats. There were many of these widows in the south, he reflected, because the men died young. Why did they die? It was because of violence and bad driving and impatience. 44 At the end of the reception, when the couple was due to go away, he stood awkwardly by the door of the hotel while the aunts fussed round and friends said goodbye to Fabrizia, girls he had known as his daughter's childhood friends, adults now, themselves married or destined for marriage. He looked at these young women with a fond eye and remembered them as girls all those years ago, when they came to the house to see Fabrizia. Childhood was so brief, so fleeting: we have our children for so short a time. He felt the tears in his eyes and he fought them back. His fixed smile returned.

Then, just before they left, Alessio's new sonin-law Salvatore came up to him and stood before him, holding out his hand. Alessio took the younger man's hand, but avoided his gaze.

'I know you don't approve of me,' Salvatore said to him, his voice lowered. 'I can tell that. But I promise you I'll look after your daughter. I give you my word as ...' He stopped, and although Alessio waited for him to finish the sentence, he did not.

He looked at the young man. 'Thank you,' he said. 'You can tell how a father feels, can't you?'

'Yes,' said Salvatore. 'That is why I'm asking you to trust me.' 45 Alessio closed his eyes. 'I shall try,' he said. Salvatore pressed his hand, and then dropped it. There was laughter from a group of Fabrizia's friends a final joke before the couple moved through the door, beneath the flashing of cameras, and into the car which had been brought up to the front of the hotel and which Salvatore's brothers were now showering with confetti.

They had never formally discussed Salvatore's entry into the business, but Fabrizia brought him in anyway, and Alessio did not challenge her. After a while Alessio would have agreed, had his daughter ever asked him, that his new son-in-law was a remarkable salesman. The takings of the shop which he supervised went up noticeably, and Alessio himself asked Salvatore to come and apply these skills in the other shops, which went on to see an improvement too.

The warmth that had grown in their working relationship now came into their personal lives. Alessio went for dinner with Fabrizia and Salvatore and bought them expensive gifts for the house. Salvatore returned these favours, inviting his father-in-law to join them at a restaurant he liked, where he introduced him to the proprietor a Southerner from Naples with pride. He bought Alessio a new briefcase, made of supple leather from Florence, and had his initials engraved on the flap in handsome gold lettering.

Fabrizia was pleased by this flowering of friendship, and over the months that followed the wedding she and her father returned to their earlier closeness. Alessio even permitted himself to make a remark about grandchildren, and how he felt 'just about ready' for a grandson. As he said this, he thought even if he ends up being called Pasquale, but he did not say this, of course; he just smiled at the idea.

Then he noticed one morning that Fabrizia seemed upset about something. She was moody and snapped at a customer, which was something for which he would normally have told her off. But now he held back. Something was wrong.

Fabrizia's mood seemed to pa.s.s, but a few days later he came upon her sitting in her office, her head sunk in her hands.

'There's something wrong,' he said, resting his hand on her shoulder. 'I can tell. There's something wrong.'

She did not look up. She was silent.

'You can confide in your father, surely?' he said. The thought occurred to him, with a sudden feeling of dread, that she was having difficulty becoming pregnant. Perhaps there was not going to be a grandson after all?

He wanted to say something rea.s.suring to her but he could not find the words, and so he remained silent, as did she. But he felt, through his hand upon her shoulder, that she was sobbing, quietly and privately.

Salvatore seemed unchanged. Perhaps it is easier for a man to come to terms with this, thought Alessio. Or perhaps he is just braver; and his admiration for his son-in-law increased. He now found himself embarra.s.sed by the memory of his earlier opposition to Salvatore, and marvelled at the young man's ability to rise above it, to forgive him for his barely hidden hostility.

Then one evening Fabrizia came to Alessio's house. She let herself in with her key and found her father in his sitting room, his feet up on the leather footstool in the shape of a pig which his wife had found for him and which was one of his favourite mementos of her.

Fabrizia stared at him, but her mind seemed to be elsewhere.

'Salvatore ...' she began.

'Yes?'

'He's seeing other women,' she said, and then she began to sob.

He stood up and placed his arm around her.

'Surely not?' he said. 'Surely you're imagining this?'

'He is,' she sobbed, shaking her head. 'He is. A wife knows.'

He stroked her hair gently. 'But have you any proof? Have you?'

It became clear that she did not, and he told her, in a rea.s.suring tone, that she should not a.s.sume that just because some Southern men carried on with other women Salvatore would do the same. 'He is a fine boy,' he said. 'I can tell. I can judge the character of men. I know that he is a good husband to you.'

She stared at him. 'But you ...'

'You should not judge a man on the basis of where he comes from,' he said. 'Forget about this. A suspicious wife can drive a man into the arms of another woman. I've seen it happen.'

Over the next few weeks, nothing more was said on the subject. Aless...o...b..gan gently to raise it with his daughter on one occasion, but her look made it clear that she did not wish to discuss it. Then, on a Sat.u.r.day morning, when they were both working in one of the shops, Salvatore drew up at the front door in an expensive new car. It was a surprise to both of them, and they went out to inspect it. Salvatore smiled and gestured proudly at the gleaming bodywork.

Alessio reflected, later, on what a car such as that must have cost. It was family money, perhaps; there was a wealthy uncle somewhere down there, he had heard. But Fabrizia had different views.

'Can't you see?' she said to her father. 'He's stealing the money from the business. He's stealing the money from you!'

He was shocked by the suggestion and turned on her, accusing her of being unfair to her husband, betraying him. 'Don't imagine that everybody from down there is dishonest,' he stormed. 'Don't make that mistake.'

She looked at him open-mouthed. 'I should not make that mistake?' she said. 'I ?'

But Alessio had walked off, dismissing his daughter with a wave of his hand. Fabrizia stood quite still, and then shrugged. She muttered something, but he did not hear what she said, and he was not interested.

Two days later, Salvatore drove off in the expensive car, a young woman in the pa.s.senger seat beside him. He was heading south. The husband of one of Fabrizia's friends, a police officer, saw him as he drove out of town, and told them about it. Fabrizia immediately checked the main business bank account an account to which Salvatore had been given free access. It had been emptied.

She went into her father's office.

'My dear,' he sighed. 'I'm so sorry. I tried to warn you, didn't I? I really tried.'

Namaqualand Daisies

1.

He was called the Captain, although he did not like the t.i.tle and had asked people not to use the rank to which he had been briefly ent.i.tled because of his service in Hong Kong. That had been in China, and was back then. This was Africa, and this was now, 1956, and he was a plain district officer in Basutoland nothing special. Just ordinary Mr Andrews. But someone had seen the letter addressed to him as Captain, and it had got about that this was what he was. In colonial society, particularly one tucked away in a mountain kingdom, anything that suggested a rank or a t.i.tle was welcome. Such places were full of wartime majors and the like, hanging on to what remained of their authority and importance. The Captain was far too young for that; he was barely thirty-five, and his wife was even younger. She had laughed when she first heard him addressed as Captain.

'It makes you sound like one of those old salts,' she said. 'It makes you sound ridiculous.'

'I didn't ask anybody to call me that,' said the Captain. 'It's like a nickname, you know. You can't stop people from calling you by a nickname. You just can't.'

2.

The Captain's wife did not like the country. She had tried to create a garden in the grounds of their house in Maseru, but had been defeated. There were white ants that ate the fruit trees she planted; there was not enough rain; the sun was too hot.

'I don't know if I'm going to be able to stick this out,' she wrote to a friend. 'This place is so far from everywhere. South Africa is just over the border, but you have to travel for miles and miles before you come across anybody who speaks English. They're all so insular. So petty.'

Her friend wrote back: 'Darling, you sound awful. What you must ask yourself is this: are you prepared to throw your life away for Hugh's sake? I know that he's frightfully good-looking and, well, I can understand that side of things, but are you sure? Are you really sure?'

Of course, once she asked herself whether she was sure, she realised that she was not. She was bored with their life. She was bored with this life where she knew every face she was likely ever to meet, and where there was n.o.body who had anything new to say.

She looked at the Captain and thought: I don't want to hurt him. He's a kind man. But I can't bear this any longer.

The Captain, gazing back at his wife the wife he feared he barely knew understood what she was thinking and realised then that he had lost her.

3.

After his wife had gone, several people took pity on the Captain. There was the widow of a Scottish cattle-trader, a woman who had been in the country for thirty years and who spoke fluent Sesotho. There was the wife of the judge, a woman who moved in a cloud of scent and cultivated large beds of Namaqualand daisies in her garden. These women, particularly the cattle-trader's widow, invited the Captain to dinner once or twice a week.

'Poor man,' said the judge's wife. 'That young woman was obviously never going to cope with the life here. People like her shouldn't marry men like the Captain. She should have stayed in Suffolk, or wherever it was that she came from.'

'She had a roving eye,' said the cattle-trader's widow.

The judge's wife seemed surprised. 'Oh? How could you tell?'

'I just could,' said the cattle-trader's widow. 'I find that I can always tell. I'm very rarely wrong about these things.'

They invited the Captain to play bridge twice a week. He usually partnered the cattle-trader's widow, and the judge's wife played opposite her husband, a man of few words who always seemed to be staring off into the distance, even when the cards were in his hand. People said that this was because he was unhappy in his job, and that he thought of the men he was obliged to sentence to prison.

'He's too sensitive for the work he does,' said the cattle-trader's widow. 'An empire is a brutal thing, you know. I remember my husband saying that. Brutal.'

4.

The Captain received a visit from a boy, who was a cousin of his wife. This boy was eighteen and was wandering around before he went to university. He wrote to the Captain and asked him whether he could stay for a few weeks. His ship was due to arrive in Cape Town, and he would come up from there to Basutoland straight away.

The Captain was pleased to discover that the boy was a good cricketer. The cricket team in which the Captain played was in need of a bowler, and the boy fitted the bill perfectly. During the day, the boy went to a local school and taught cricket there. This was done at the suggestion of the Captain, who thought that it was better for the boy to be doing something rather than sitting about the house all day.

He took the boy with him on a trip down to the south of the country when he had to visit his junior administrators. They went into the mountains on Basuto ponies and set up camp near a small river, which tumbled down the hillside. From this camp the night was a dark blanket under a sky that was filled with sparkling constellations of stars. It made one dizzy to lie back and look up into the heavens. 'That way,' said the Captain, 'that way, down there, is the Indian Ocean.'

'I know,' said the boy.

5.