Two Lives Part 18

All this began nine years before the summer of which I write the nine years in which I left the past behind, as t.i.tle succeeded t.i.tle: Precious September, Flight to Enchantment, For Ever More, Behold My Heart! Precious September, Flight to Enchantment, For Ever More, Behold My Heart! and many others. My savings had bought the house; now though after difficult beginnings there was wealth. One day it would be Quinty who woke up rich, yet he could not possibly have predicted what would happen here: that I would sit down in my private room and compose romances. As far as Quinty knew, there was nothing in my history to suggest such a development; I was not that kind of woman. To tell the truth, I'd hardly have guessed it myself. As a villa hostess in an idyllic setting, I would make a living for both of us out of a pa.s.sing tourist trade, as I had made one in a different role in Africa. That's how Quinty saw the future and as far as it went he was right, of course. He's cute as a fox when it comes to matters of gain, that being his life really. and many others. My savings had bought the house; now though after difficult beginnings there was wealth. One day it would be Quinty who woke up rich, yet he could not possibly have predicted what would happen here: that I would sit down in my private room and compose romances. As far as Quinty knew, there was nothing in my history to suggest such a development; I was not that kind of woman. To tell the truth, I'd hardly have guessed it myself. As a villa hostess in an idyllic setting, I would make a living for both of us out of a pa.s.sing tourist trade, as I had made one in a different role in Africa. That's how Quinty saw the future and as far as it went he was right, of course. He's cute as a fox when it comes to matters of gain, that being his life really.

Besides the tourists, our visitors are rare: a functionary from the tax office, or would-be thieves arriving with some excuse to look the place over, a traveller in fertilizers seeking directions to a nearby farm. Ever since the summer of 1987, which I think of to this day as the summer of the General and Otmar and the child, and which I remember most vividly of all the seasons of my life, nothing has been quite the same. That summer and for a few summers after it no tourists were received. Yet had you, for some other reason, gained admission during that summer Quinty would have led you through the outer hall and through the inner one and into the salotto, salotto, to wait there for me. Depending upon the time of day, the General would probably have been reading his English newspaper in the cool of the shadows, the child engrossed in one of her drawings, Otmar soundlessly tapping a surface with his remaining fingers. Many times that summer I imagined a voice saying: 'I have come for Otmar,' or: 'I understand you are keeping an old Englishman here,' or: 'Gather up the child's belongings.' Many times I imagined the car that had drawn up, and the dust its wheels had raised. I imagined a little knot of official people outside our entrance doors, one of them lighting a cigarette to pa.s.s the time, the b.u.t.t later thrown down on the gravel. In fact, it wasn't like that in the least. All that happened was that Thomas Riversmith came. to wait there for me. Depending upon the time of day, the General would probably have been reading his English newspaper in the cool of the shadows, the child engrossed in one of her drawings, Otmar soundlessly tapping a surface with his remaining fingers. Many times that summer I imagined a voice saying: 'I have come for Otmar,' or: 'I understand you are keeping an old Englishman here,' or: 'Gather up the child's belongings.' Many times I imagined the car that had drawn up, and the dust its wheels had raised. I imagined a little knot of official people outside our entrance doors, one of them lighting a cigarette to pa.s.s the time, the b.u.t.t later thrown down on the gravel. In fact, it wasn't like that in the least. All that happened was that Thomas Riversmith came.

That summer the child was eight years old, Otmar twenty-seven, the General elderly. They were three people on their own, and so was I. 'Heart's companion' is an expression I used to some effect in Two on a Sunbeam, Two on a Sunbeam, and the fact that it lingers still in my mind, so long after the last paragraph of that work was completed, is perhaps significant, personally. I have always been the first to admit that in this world we are eternal beggars yet it is also true that alms are not withheld for ever. When I was in the care of Mr and Mrs Trice I longed for a cowboy to step down from the screen of the old Gaiety Cinema and s.n.a.t.c.h me on to his saddle, spiriting me away from 21 Prince Albert Street. When I was a girl, serving clerks in a public-house dining-room, I longed for a young man of good family to draw his car up beside me on the street. When I was a woman I longed for a different kind of stranger to appear in the Cafe Rose. That summer, in Umbria, I had long ago abandoned hope. In my fifty-sixth year I had come to terms with stuff like that. My stories were a help, no point in denying it. and the fact that it lingers still in my mind, so long after the last paragraph of that work was completed, is perhaps significant, personally. I have always been the first to admit that in this world we are eternal beggars yet it is also true that alms are not withheld for ever. When I was in the care of Mr and Mrs Trice I longed for a cowboy to step down from the screen of the old Gaiety Cinema and s.n.a.t.c.h me on to his saddle, spiriting me away from 21 Prince Albert Street. When I was a girl, serving clerks in a public-house dining-room, I longed for a young man of good family to draw his car up beside me on the street. When I was a woman I longed for a different kind of stranger to appear in the Cafe Rose. That summer, in Umbria, I had long ago abandoned hope. In my fifty-sixth year I had come to terms with stuff like that. My stories were a help, no point in denying it.

The winter and the spring that preceded that summer had been quiet. From time to time bundles of fan mail had arrived, forwarded by the English publishers. There had been invitations to attend get-togethers of one kind or another I remember in particular a t.i.tle that struck me, a 'Festival of Romance', in some Iron Curtain country. I have never gone in for that kind of thing, and politely declined. A man wrote from New Zealand, pointing out that he enjoyed the same surname as one of my characters an unusual name, he suggested, which indeed it was: I imagined I had invented it. A schoolgirl in Stockton-on-Tees poured out her heart, as schoolgirls often do. An elderly person chided me for some historical carelessness or other, too slight to signify.

In January a pet died. Years ago a lame Siamese cat had wandered into the grounds one day, a pathetic creature, all skin and bone. Signora Bardini befriended her. She called the creature Tata and attached a little bell on a chain around her neck so that a gentle tinkling became a feature of my house. We watched her health recovering, her coat becoming silky again, contentment returning. But Tata was never young and never sprightly: we knew from the beginning that all she could give us was what remained of a mostly spent life. She grew old gracefully, which is nice, I think, for any creature, human or otherwise. Signora Bardini put a little wooden board up, that being her way.

Signora Bardini is a widow to whom no children were born. When her husband, a carpenter by trade, died in 1975 she apparently took some time to come to terms with her solitude. Although she speaks no English, I believe she was not happy again until she came to work in my house. Her life might have been perfect here were it not for Quinty, towards whom from the first she displayed an undemonstrative antipathy. Clearly she does not care for his relationship with Rosa Crevelli, nor his cheese-paring in household matters. But Signora Bardini is not, and never was, a woman to raise any kind of fuss.

That, then, was how things were at the beginning of the summer I write of. The house smelt faintly of paint, for some redecoration had recently been completed. 'We must have a garden,' I had repeatedly said that winter and spring, saying it mainly to myself. 'It is ridiculous that a house like this does not have a garden to it.' That was a little on my mind, as it had been for years. One April, pa.s.sing through a railway station here in Italy, I noticed a great display of azaleas in pots. I did not then know what that flower is called, but later described it to Quinty, who found out for me. Ever since I had longed for an azalea garden, and for the lawns that I remember in England, and for little flowerbeds edged with pinks.

You may consider I was fortunate to lack only a garden and a particular friend, and of course you are right. I was, and am, immensely fortunate. Not many of us acquire the means necessary to occupy a place such as this, to choose as I may choose, rarely to count the cost. Not many pa.s.s a winter and spring with only the death of a lame cat to grieve over. In the eyes of the tourists who came here I was a comfortably-off English-woman, well looked after by my servants. Quinty no doubt struck them as eccentric, if not bizarre. For one thing he has a way of arbitrarily allocating to other people a particular obsession in order to hold forth on it himself. From encyclopaedias and newspapers he has acquired a wealth of chatty information on many subjects royal families, the Iron Age, sewerage systems, land speed records, the initiation practices of blind Amazon tribes. A score of times I have heard him supplying some unfortunate tourist with the history of the j.a.panese railways or the nature of the jackal. 'Giuseppe Garibaldi gave his name to a biscuit,' he has confided in my hall; 'the city of Bath to another. Hard tack the first biscuit of all was called, and had to be broken with a hammer.' Jauntily gregarious, he endlessly leant against a pillar in the salotto salotto that summer to conduct with the General a one-sided conversation about sport. When Mr Riversmith arrived he was imbued with an interest in holy women, although it could hardly have been clearer that Mr Riversmith's subject was ants. that summer to conduct with the General a one-sided conversation about sport. When Mr Riversmith arrived he was imbued with an interest in holy women, although it could hardly have been clearer that Mr Riversmith's subject was ants.

In other ways Quinty can be dubious to a degree that makes him untrustworthy. One day in the April of that year Rosa Crevelli was rude to me in Italian, scornfully curling down her beautiful lower lip as she muttered something. Quinty observed this, but did not reprimand her. For the first time, I realized, he must have broken the unspoken agreement that had existed between us ever since we'd left the Cafe Rose: he had told this girl about the past.

Later I taxed him with this treachery. He laughed at first, but then he turned away and his cheeks were damp with tears when again he faced me. 'How can you make such an accusation?' he whispered in a broken voice, and went on for so long professing loyalty and faithfulness, uttering statements to the effect that he and the girl would lay down their lives for me, and protesting their desire to be nowhere else on earth but in my house that I forgave him. 'I've poured you a nice g and t,' he said with a smile, coming to find me that evening in the salotto. salotto. When I met her next Rosa Crevelli curtsied. When I met her next Rosa Crevelli curtsied.

Of course I could not be certain: maybe they sn.i.g.g.e.red, who can say? That I have a tendency to give the benefit of the doubt is either a weakness or a strength, but whichever it is I certainly don't claim it as a virtue. In fact, for very good reasons, I claim very little for myself: there's not much to me, and I'm the first to confess it. Nor do I claim anything mystical for that particular summer, no angels making their presence felt in my house, no voices heard. The child was an ordinary child, and I believe the others were ordinary too. Yet I don't think anyone would deny that it was a singular summer, and const.i.tuted an experience not given to everyone.

On 5 May, in the morning, wearing a suit of narrow black-and-white stripes, handbag and shoes to match, I left my house to travel to Milan. Quinty drove me to the railway junction and gave me my ticket on the platform. I can manage to travel very well on my own, despite my limited understanding of the Italian language. I recognize the familiar phrase when the ticket collector demands to see my ticket. In Rinascente and all the other stores I shop successfully, and in the Grand Hotel Duomo, where I always stay, excellent English is spoken. I look forward to shopping for clothes and shoes, taking my time over their choosing, going away to think things over, returning twice or three times: all that I love.

No one was staying in my house that day; no tourists had been sent on by the hotels since the end of last year's season, and we didn't expect any until the middle of June at least. Not that it is ever necessary for me to be there when visitors do arrive, but even so I like to welcome them. In the dining-room we sit at one round table and if English is spoken we talk of this and that, of places that have been visited, of experiences while travelling. If English is difficult for my guests, they speak in whatever language their own is, and I am not offended. There are never more than five in my dining-room or at the table on the terrace when we choose to dine outside.

In the train I imagined Quinty driving from the railway junction and shopping in the town, the large, grey, open-hooded car parked in the shade of the chestnut trees by the church. He would call in for a coffee and then return to the house, where he and Signora Bardini and Rosa Crevelli would have lunch in the kitchen. I imagined them there, the three of them around the table, Quinty repeating new English words and phrases for Rosa Crevelli. I wondered if Signora Bardini, too, had also been told about the past. Determinedly I pushed all that away, and then my mind became occupied by a t.i.tle that had occurred to me at the railway junction. Ceaseless Tears. Ceaseless Tears. So far, that was all I had. A heroine had not c ome to me: I could not even faintly glimpse a hero. Yet that t.i.tle insisted itself upon my consciousness, and I knew that when a t.i.tle was insistent I must persevere. So far, that was all I had. A heroine had not c ome to me: I could not even faintly glimpse a hero. Yet that t.i.tle insisted itself upon my consciousness, and I knew that when a t.i.tle was insistent I must persevere.

The train was a Rome express; it had come through Orvieto before I boarded it; Arezzo and Florence lay ahead. Imagine the stylish interior of a First Cla.s.s rapido, rapido, the pleasant Pullman atmosphere, the frilled white antimaca.s.sars, the comfortable roominess. Diagonally across from where I sat were a young man and a girl: you could tell from their faces that they were lovers. An older couple travelled with the father of the woman: you could tell that was the relationship from their conversation. This threesome spoke in English, the lovers in German. A mother and a father travelled with their two children, a boy and a girl: I could not hear what they said, but everything about them suggested Americans. A woman who might have been in the fashion world was on her own. Italian businessmen in lightweight suits occupied the other seats. the pleasant Pullman atmosphere, the frilled white antimaca.s.sars, the comfortable roominess. Diagonally across from where I sat were a young man and a girl: you could tell from their faces that they were lovers. An older couple travelled with the father of the woman: you could tell that was the relationship from their conversation. This threesome spoke in English, the lovers in German. A mother and a father travelled with their two children, a boy and a girl: I could not hear what they said, but everything about them suggested Americans. A woman who might have been in the fashion world was on her own. Italian businessmen in lightweight suits occupied the other seats.

I watched the lovers. He stroked her bare arm; you could tell how much she was in love with him, though he wasn't exactly handsome or even prepossessing. Did the older couple find the father a tiresome addition to their relationship? If they did, their politeness allowed not a single intimation of it to show; but, oddly, that politeness worried me. The Americans were stylish, the children arguing a little as spirited children do, the parents softly conversing, sometimes laughing. The mother was a particularly appealing young woman, fair-haired and freckled, with dimples in both cheeks and a flash of humour in her eyes.

Increasingly, I liked the t.i.tle that had come to me, yet could still find no meaning in it, no indication of this direction or that. I recalled Ernestine French-Wyn, who had caused Adam to weep so in Behold My Heart! Behold My Heart! But one story rarely prompts the secrets of another and to avoid the nagging of my frustration I forced myself to observe again my fellow-travellers. The heads of the lovers were now bent over a sc.r.a.p of paper on which the girl she had a look of Lilli Palmer in her earliest films was making a calculation. The daughter and son-in-law read; the old man had taken his watch off and was meticulously re-setting it. The little American boy was being reprimanded by his mother; the little girl changed places with him and took her father's hand. Somewhere in my mind's vision a description of this scene appeared: darkly-typed lines on the green typing paper I always use. I had no idea why that was. But one story rarely prompts the secrets of another and to avoid the nagging of my frustration I forced myself to observe again my fellow-travellers. The heads of the lovers were now bent over a sc.r.a.p of paper on which the girl she had a look of Lilli Palmer in her earliest films was making a calculation. The daughter and son-in-law read; the old man had taken his watch off and was meticulously re-setting it. The little American boy was being reprimanded by his mother; the little girl changed places with him and took her father's hand. Somewhere in my mind's vision a description of this scene appeared: darkly-typed lines on the green typing paper I always use. I had no idea why that was.

The train moved swiftly, flashing through small railway stations and landscape still verdant after the rains of spring. The ticket collector appeared. Then the restaurant-car conductor hurried by, tinkling his midday bell. The businessmen went to lunch, so did the fashion woman. Out of nowhere, words came: In the garden the geraniums were in flower. Through scented twilight the girl in the white dress walked with a step as light as a morning cobweb. That evening she hadn't a care in the world. In the garden the geraniums were in flower. Through scented twilight the girl in the white dress walked with a step as light as a morning cobweb. That evening she hadn't a care in the world.

It would go on. I would sit down at my little black Olympia and paragraph would obediently follow paragraph, one scene flowing into the next, conversations occurring naturally. I turned the pages of Oggi, Oggi, but soon lost interest. Where would I be, I found myself thinking, if late in my life I had not discovered my modest gift? At my age there were women who still served clerks their plates of food in public-house dining-rooms. There were women who sold shoes as I have also done or swabbed out cabins on ferry-steamers. It had never seemed like good fortune that I'd found myself in the Cafe Rose, but in fairness to fate I have to say it was. I ran the place in the end everyone's friend, as they used to say there. I was fortunate, I must record again, because without the Cafe Rose I don't believe I'd ever have put pen to paper. but soon lost interest. Where would I be, I found myself thinking, if late in my life I had not discovered my modest gift? At my age there were women who still served clerks their plates of food in public-house dining-rooms. There were women who sold shoes as I have also done or swabbed out cabins on ferry-steamers. It had never seemed like good fortune that I'd found myself in the Cafe Rose, but in fairness to fate I have to say it was. I ran the place in the end everyone's friend, as they used to say there. I was fortunate, I must record again, because without the Cafe Rose I don't believe I'd ever have put pen to paper.

I must have slept, for in a dream Ernie Chubbs approached me outside the Al Fresco Club and exclaimed, just as he had in reality, 'Hi, sugar!' He told me he loved me in the Al Fresco Club; he wanted to sit with me all night, he whispered. Ernie went on buying drinks, the way they liked you to in the Al Fresco, and when another man came up and bought drinks also Ernie was furious, and told him to go away. Then, as abruptly as it always is in dreams, I was shopping in Milan, trying on long suede coats in different colours next season's cut, the a.s.sistant said. I liked the wrap-around style and was saying so when my eyes were wrenched open by a burst of noise. There was gla.s.s in the air, and the face of the American woman was upside down. There was screaming, and pain, before the darkness came.

2.

'It's Quinty come to see you,' Quinty said. 'You're all right. You're OK.'

He tried to smile. The lines on his cheeks had wrinkled into zigzags, but the smile itself would not properly come.

'Is it Good Friday?' I asked, confused, because Good Friday did not come into any of it. I heard myself talking about the Cafe Rose, how one particular Good Friday the Austrian ivory cutter had been high on the stuff he took, and Poor Boy Abraham had been upset on account of anyone being high on the day when Jesus suffered on the Cross.

There were hours of shadows then they might have been years for all I knew and through them moved the white uniforms of the nurses, one nurse in particular, with thinning black hair. 'You've had a bang,' Quinty said, 'but thanks be to G.o.d you're progressing well.' He sniffed the way he sometimes does, a casual, careless sound, disguising something else.

'What happened?' I asked, but Quinty's reply if he made one at all eluded me, and when I looked he was no longer there. I didn't want to think; I allowed my mind to wander where it would, gliding over the past, swooping into it here and there, no effort made on my part, no exhaustion. 'Have they paid?' Mrs Trice asked her husband. She was always asking him that, he being a collector of insurance money. 'You're weak with them,' she accused him. 'Weak as old water.' As a child, I lived for eight years at 21 Prince Albert Street before I realized that my presence there was the result of a monetary transaction. I'd always addressed the Trices as though they were my mother and father, not knowing about the people of the Wall of Death until Mrs Trice told me in the kitchen one Sat.u.r.day morning. 'They were paid a sum by Mr Trice,' was how she put it. 'They weren't people you'd care for.'

Between sleep and consciousness the honest black face of Poor Boy Abraham edged out the Trices, his negroid features intent as he swept the veranda floor at the Cafe Rose, while the fans whirred and rattled. The four Englishmen played poker at the corner table. 'Where would I be if I did not come with my woes to you?' the Austrian ivory cutter asked and, as always, drew the conversation round to his hopeless coveting of some black man's wife. The aviator who was a regular in the cafe had been a skywriter, advertising a brand of beer mainly.

I dropped into sleep and dreamed, as I had on the train. 'Feeling better, girlie?' Ernie Chubbs was solicitous in Idaho. 'Fancy a chow mein sent up?'

A nurse spoke kindly in Italian. I could tell she was being kind from her expression. She rearranged my pillows and for a moment held my hand. I think I must have called out in my sleep. When I seemed calm again she went away.

When Ernie Chubbs suggested accompanying him to Idaho I did so because I wanted to see the Old West. To this day, the Old West fascinates me: Claire Trevor in her cowgirl clothes, Marlene Dietrich singing in the saloon. To this day, I close my eyes when a wheel of the stagecoach works itself loose; I'm still not quick enough to see a sheriff draw his gun. Mr Tree took me to the Gaiety Cinema on Sunday afternoons and we would watch the comedy short Leon Errol or Laurel and Hardy, or Charlie Chase and then the Gaumont News and the serial episode, and whatever else there was besides the main feature. Sometimes the main feature was a gangster thriller, or an ice-skating drama or a musical, and that was always a disappointment. I longed for the canyons and the ranches, for the sound of a posse's hooves, the saddles that became pillows beneath the stars.

Idaho was a disappointment too. Ernie Chubbs, who said he knew the region well, a.s.sured me it was where the Old West still was; but needless to say that wasn't true. A lifetime's dream was shattered not that I expected to find the winding trails just as they had been shown to me, but at least there might have been something reminiscent of them, at least there might have been a smell of leather. 'You're simple, Emily,' the big doctor who came to the Cafe Rose used to say. And yes, I suppose I am: I cannot help myself. I'm simple and I'm sentimental.

'How long is it?' I asked. 'How long have I lain here?'

But the Italian nurses only smiled and rearranged my pillows. I worried about how long it was; yet a moment later or perhaps it wasn't a moment that didn't matter in the least. The Idaho of Ernie Chubbs his going out on business, the waiting in the motel room must have made me moan, because the nurses comforted me again. When they did, the Old West filled my thoughts, driving everything else away. In the Gaiety Cinema there were no curtains to the screen. On to the bare, pale expanse came the holsters and the sweat-bands of the huge-brimmed hats, the feathered Indians falling one by one, the rough and tumble of the fist fights. I was seven, and eight, and nine, when Dietrich sang. 'See what the boys in the back room will have,' 'See what the boys in the back room will have,' she commanded in her peremptory manner, she commanded in her peremptory manner, 'And tell them I'll have the same.' 'And tell them I'll have the same.' In my sedated tranquillity I heard that song again; and the Idaho of Ernie Chubbs seemed gone for ever. Young men I have myself given life to whispered lines of love to happy girls. The Wedding March played, bouquets were thrown by brides. The Cafe Rose might not have existed either. In my sedated tranquillity I heard that song again; and the Idaho of Ernie Chubbs seemed gone for ever. Young men I have myself given life to whispered lines of love to happy girls. The Wedding March played, bouquets were thrown by brides. The Cafe Rose might not have existed either.

'Quinty.'

'Rest yourself, now.'

'There were other people. A young man and his girl who talked in German. Americans. Italians in dark suits. A woman in the fashion business. Three English people. Are they here too, Quinty?'

'They are of course.'

'Quinty, will you find out? Find out and tell me. Please.'

'Don't upset yourself with that type of thing.'

'Are they dead, Quinty?'

'I'll ask.'

But he didn't move away from my bedside. He visited me to see if there were grounds for hope, promise of a relapse. His eyes were like two black gimlets; I closed my own. Little Bonny Maye was employed in Toupe's Better Value Store, attaching prices to the shelved goods with a price-gun. Small discs of adhesive paper, each marked with an appropriate figure, were punched on to the surface of cans and packets. At certain hours of the day she worked a till.

Little Bonny Maye was taken up by Dorothy, an older girl from the table-tennis club. Dorothy was secretary to a financier and had been privately educated. Her voice was beautiful, and so was Dorothy herself. Bonny couldn't think why she'd been taken up, and even if Dorothy had a way of asking her to do things for her rather a lot Bonny still appreciated the friendship more than any she had known. She was only too grateful: all the time with Dorothy that was what Bonny thought. Her single anxiety was that some silliness on her part would ruin everything.

'Did you ever read that story of mine, Quinty? Little Bonny Maye? Little Bonny Maye? I was surprised to hear myself asking Quinty that. It wasn't our usual kind of conversation. He said: I was surprised to hear myself asking Quinty that. It wasn't our usual kind of conversation. He said: 'It's great you have your stories.'

'I thought about them in the Cafe Rose.'

'You told me that.'

'I don't remember telling you.'

'You had a drink or two in, the time you told me.'

The three words of the t.i.tle were blue on the amber of the book-jacket, the two girls ill.u.s.trated below. I must have said so because Quinty nodded. Soon afterwards he went away. He might even have guessed I had begun to hear the girls' voices.

'Dear, there is an "h" in "house", you know.' Dorothy could bring out Bonny's blushes, hardly making an effort. When they went on holiday together, while Bonny fetched and carried for the older girl, Dorothy drew up a list of words that Bonny should take special care with. 'Our fork belongs on our plate, not in the air. I had a nanny who said that.'

When I dozed, the pain in my face sometimes dulled to a tightness and for the first time, probably, I tried to smile. The two girls were on holiday in Menton, and when Blane came into their lives he naturally took Dorothy out, leaving poor Bonny to mooch about on her own, since it wouldn't have been right for her to tag along. 'Of course I don't mind. Of course not.' She tried to keep her spirits up by eating ice-cream or going to look at the yachts.

I was aware of making no effort whatsoever. I controlled nothing. Faces and words and voices flowed over me. 'Such an unhappy thing!' Blane exclaimed. 'Such rotten luck!' Dorothy had developed appendicitis. An ambulance had come. 'You need a cognac,' Blane insisted. 'Or a Cointreau. No, Bonny, I absolutely insist. Poor girl, how wretched for you too!' Dorothy's holiday was a write-off. Every morning Blane called for Bonny in his Peugeot and drove her to the bedside of her friend, who usually had made a list of things she wanted. Afterwards Blane and Bonny lunched together in the Pet.i.t Es-cargot.

Three months ago Blane had inherited Mara Hall, a great house in its own park in Shropshire. But as soon as he had done so he left England, being fearful of the house even though he loved it.

'My mother died when I was one and a half. There was always just my father and myself.'

'No brothers or sisters, Blane?'

'No brothers or sisters.'

Bonny thought how lonely that must have been: a boy growing up in a great house with only his father and the servants for company. His father was severe, expecting a lot of his heir.

'I'm a coward, I dare say. I'd give the world to take everything in my stride. I'm running away. I know that, Bonny.'

'Was your father '

'My father did things perfectly. He was a strong man. He married the woman he loved and never looked at another. The servants and his tenants adored him.'

There was a head gardener at Mara Hall, and several under-gardeners. There was a butler and a cook and old retainers in the way of maids, all of whom had been there as long as Blane could remember. Once there'd been footmen, but that was ages ago.

Mara Hall was more vivid than the shadows of nurses whose speech I did not understand, and the odour of an-aesthetic: the lawns and the tea roses, the mellow brick of the house itself and of the kitchen-garden walls, the old ornamental ironwork. I felt as Bonny felt overawed with wonder. Bonny had not been abandoned in a bleak seaside town by a couple who rode a Wall of Death; but something like it was in Bonny's past, even if it did not come out in the story. I felt that strongly now; I never had before.

'It sounds so lovely, Blane. Your home.'

'Yes, it's lovely.'

They walked in the evenings on the promenade. He would marry Dorothy, Bonny thought, and take her to Mara Hall. Dorothy was capable as well as beautiful. Dorothy would gently lead him back to his responsibilities. He would become as strong as his father; he would do things as perfectly.

'Dear Bonny,' he said, in a tone that made her hold her breath. She could not speak. The sea was a sheet of gla.s.s, reflecting the tranquil azure of the sky. 'Dear Bonny,' he said again.

The doctors who attended me conferred. One spoke in English, smiling, telling me I had made progress, saying they were pleased.

'I'm glad you're pleased,' I replied.

'You have been courageous, signora,' the same doctor said. 'And patient, signora.'

They pa.s.sed on, both nodding a satisfied farewell at me. Blane took the modest creature's arm; she trembled at the touch because no man had ever taken Bonny Maye's arm before. No man had ever called her dear. She'd never known a heart's companion.

'Much better,' Dorothy said, but it was their last day in Menton. She'd left her dark gla.s.ses on her bedside table and Bonny went to fetch them. Blane drove her to Bordighera and Bonny miserably ate an ice-cream on the front. She wrote the postcards she should have written before, to the other girls in Toupe's Better Value Store. She'd be back before they received them.

Once only the story was interrupted by the ravenous features of Ernie Chubbs, his eyes seeking mine from the shadows of the Al Fresco Club, his fingers undoing my zips in the motel room. There was an old mangle in the motel room, and a tin bath in which kindling was kept. I knew all that was wrong. 'It wouldn't do to tell,' Ernie Chubbs said. 'Good girls don't tell, Emily.' That was wrong also. It wasn't Ernie who'd ever said good girls don't tell, and Ernie Chubbs hadn't been ravenous in that particular way.

The chill f.a.g-end of a nightmare, darkly colourless, something like a rat in a drawing-room, went as quickly as it had arrived, crushed out of existence by a warmer potency. 'Well, really!' Dorothy was a little cross when they returned from Bordighera. She lay down to rest and complained that the bedroom was too hot and then, when the window was opened, that the draught was uncomfortable. She wanted Vichy water but they brought her Evian. Impatiently she stubbed out a cigarette she had not yet placed between her lips.

'Bonny,' he said, leaning on the open door of the little Peugeot. 'Oh, Bonny, if I could only make you happy!'

He is the kindest person I have ever known, she thought. He knows I love him; he knows I have been unable to help myself. This is kindness now, to speak of my happiness when it is his and Dorothy's that is at stake. They have had a little tiff this afternoon, but soon they will make it up. Tonight he will ask Dorothy to marry him, and after tomorrow I shall never in my life see either of them again. Dorothy'll be too busy and too full of happiness ever to return to the table-tennis club. There'll be the wedding preparations and then the honeymoon and then the return to Mara Hall.

'Look, Bonny,' he said, and in the sunlight sapphires sparkled. He had snapped open a little box; the slender band of gold that held the jewels lay on a tiny cushion. 'I bought it for her,' he said, 'three days after we met.'

'It's beautiful.' The words choked out of her. Tears misted her vision. She tried to smile but could not.

'I have to tell you that, Bonny. I have to tell you I bought it for Dorothy.'

She nodded bleakly.

'I might have offered it to Dorothy this afternoon. I could not, Bonny.'

Again she nodded, not understanding, trying to pretend she did.

'I can only love you, Bonny. I know that, if I know nothing else in this world.'

'Me? Me? Me?'

'Yes. Oh yes, my dear.'

His face was smiling down at her bewilderment. His lips were parted. She heard herself saying she was nothing much, while knowing she should not say that. She heard him laugh.

'Oh, but of course you are, my dear. You are everything in this world to me. Darling, you are the sun and the stars, you are the scent of summer jasmine. Can you understand that?'

She flushed and looked away, thinking of Dorothy and feeling treacherous, and more confused than ever. She wanted to laugh and cry all at once.

'Darling Bonny, you have the lips of an angel.'

His own touched the lips he spoke of. The gentle pressure was like fire between them.

'Oh Blane, Blane,' she murmured.

'Say nothing, darling,' he whispered back, and in some secret moment the sapphire ring found her engagement finger.

I would like to have married and had children. But Ernie Chubbs, swearing to me that he took precautions, never did so. In my a.s.sociation with him I had no fewer than four abortions, the last of them in Idaho. I would not have children now, they told me then. 'Sorry, girlie,' Ernie Chubbs said. 'Fancy a chilli con carne sent up?'

Crimson spread on denim. A hand that was crimson also bounced back from the ceiling, dangled for an instant in the air, fingers splayed. A screeching of terror was different from the screams of pain. Even while it was happening you could hear the difference.

'Twenty pound,' Mrs Trice said. 'That's what he give. He likes a child, Mr Trice does. He got the dog for nothing.' Rough type of people she said, to profit from a baby. 'You b.l.o.o.d.y give it back,' I said to him, 'but they was gone by then. Fifty they ask, twenty he give.' Rum and Coca-Cola, Ernie asked for in the Al Fresco, a fiver a time. 'Easy money,' Mrs Trice said, lifting a slice of Dundee to her lips. 'Travelling people's always after easy money.'

'Lightning,' I said myself. 'The train was struck by lightning.'

The strength of the drugs was daily reduced; tranquillity receded little by little. At 21 Prince Albert Street I stirred milk in a saucepan, and Mrs Trice was furious because the milk burnt and milk cannot burn, apparently, while it is stirred. It was in the back-yard shed at 21 Prince Albert Street that the mangle was, and the kindling in the bath. It was in the back-yard shed that the man I took to be my father wept and said we mustn't tell, that good girls didn't. It was his face that was ravenous, not Ernie Chubbs's. Ernie loved me was what I thought.