Patricia and Malise (9 page)

As well as composing his letter to Patricia (which took several days), passing time in the garden, as described in the composition, talking to his father, his stepmother, and occasionally and formally with his brother (but never referring to his foolish nocturnal outpouring), Malise held conferences with a local solicitor. It was the moment to put matters in place. There were several weeks to go before Antonio's school term began and, if matters were not settled by then, it would be a case of dividing his time between Lucca and the Hertfordshire farm house until they were.

Together with the solicitor, mutterings from Christian, silence from the father and lamentations from Alyson, it was decided that the old pair move to a care home in the next village but one. It was inopportunely known as ‘The Grid.' The name had been much criticised in the neighbourhood when first the institution opened, but the place had been converted from old farm buildings and the main house stood on the site of a long-disused cattle grid. Notwithstanding opposition it continued to be called ‘The Grid' and the staff were known to be kind.

Alyson was resigned. She already knew three dwellers there, all widows, and she hoped to be included in their bridge circle although her game was rusty.

The farmhouse was to be let with arrangement for Christian to keep three rooms at the back. One of these was to be their shared bedroom so that Malise would always have somewhere to sleep on his visits to the old place.

‘As you know Christian.' He spoke with less certainty than in the past – now that Christian was party to his secret. ‘I may be away a great deal. This place does belong to me but I am happy to let you stay on for the time being. If, when I return from time to time, I shall put up a bed in the downstairs room. It's high time we had rooms of our own.' With Patricia in mind, he was a grown man.

All this needed much sorting and constant argument – largely over which pieces of furniture Alyson wished to take with her to The Grid.

An anxious Malise knew that many days were likely to be needed for a letter to travel to the Pisan hills where Patricia was to be handed it by her conspiratorial neighbour.

He wrote several similar ones – doubly reminding her of his manliness, his sense of duty and the notch in his trousers.

It was at least a fortnight before a reply came. Remembering, with extraordinary vividness, her writing from the brief note she had handed him and knowing that no other letter was likely to come for him with an Italian stamp attached, his hands trembled as he opened it. To his infinite but momentary joy, it contained more than just a line or two. His infinite joy departed but the trembling continued as he read on.

‘Dear Malise. I have now had three letters from you, all posted in England, and thank you for all of them BUT, I fear, they must now stop.'

Lead entered his body.

‘The days you spent here were wonderful but I was, and I'm sorry to say this, in cloud cuckoo land. I was a little starved of ‘Englishness' and you were more than brilliant with Antonio. Thank you for that and for our unreal time together.

No more but best wishes for your great tasks. I will endeavour to take a different route when I bicycle through Lucca – until I know you are no longer living there for I hate the idea of hurting you further. I will make enquiries at the bar. Yours in deep regret for any misunderstandings. Patricia.'

Had his letters in some way ‘put her off'?

He had taken much trouble over them. Even reminded her of his trousers. It was unimaginable. All his thoughts were centred around her. Not that he wanted Andrea to leave her. God forbid! The last thing he needed was to find himself supporting a wife on his meagre income – possibly a child too – if he turned out to constitute the guilty party in a divorce.

He had no idea what to do next or how to handle his desires which were still exceedingly strong.

Surely, he would find her on her bicycle. There were not that many cycling routes through the ancient city. Were he to track her down, then there was every chance that, upon sighting him, (particularly with the two tightened notches) she would melt in a moment.

He wrote again.

‘My very dearest Patricia. Whoa there! Your letter landed me with a bomb shell. I can only believe that you have been struck by pangs of conscience. I respect you for that. You have a delightful husband and I have no wish to hold myself responsible for breaking up a happy family such as yours. However, I don't see why we may not continue to meet – when it suits your domestic life of course – and continue to pursue the wonders that we were able to provide for each other. ‘

Many screech marks later, he finished the letter by telling her more of his self-sacrificing experiences.

He stalked off again to the post office, pleased with the epistle. Pleased, too, that he hadn't humbled himself. Mc Hips were a proud people.

‘.

It was aggravating to see Christian behaving in a contented fashion. He drove in and out of the gate in his ‘old banger' and enjoyed moving furniture around in preparation for the great changes in their household. Malise began to have doubts as to what these changes were in aid of – apart from the advantage of preserving his property for the future with Christian there to look after things and an income for letting out most of the house. That income was needed for upkeep – garden and maintenance. His father's own money was to pay for what was left of the old couples' lives at The Grid.

He read and re-read Patricia's letter. What particularly flabbergasted him was her writing of avoiding him in Lucca. Not even a last meeting. He wondered if Antonio had suspected anything on the occasions when his mother left him alone in an unlit house to spend euphoric hours on the prickly mattress.

What he refused to accept was that his charms had faded in her mind.

He did not hear from her again.

Weeks passed.

School term, in Italy, had begun. It irked him that he still paid rent, albeit very little, for the apartment high up among the church bells.

Nights with Christian were a torment. His brother snored loudly and contentedly – no demons crippling his heart.

They were no longer on speaking terms but each man had a Teddy bear at his side. The floor was covered in the same drear linoleum that had provided a base for their early togetherness.

Malise's efforts to sleep were riddled with pain and anxiety. He, who had deemed himself equal to any crisis, was now helpless.

He woke early each morning.

One morning in particular.

Christian was still breathing like a grampus and Malise noticed that his own slippers were not beside his bed as usual although his brother's were in place. He had, it transpired, left them in the bathroom. Out of character.

He also began to worry that he had misplaced deeds of the house and other papers left by the solicitor for him to re-read.

He did find the papers and his confidence was partially restored. These slight aberrations, he supposed, were the direct result of shock.

One evening there was a kerfuffle. Alyson mislaid her pills. The ones that were normally propped up beside the clock on the mantelpiece. Malise did not remember throwing them into a dustbin and the mystery was never fully resolved although he had a dim inkling of his own responsibility concerning the drama. He had always despised medication. New prescriptions had to be sent for and Alyson was fretful and accusatory.

Christian's disenchantment with him had not taken root until after the war and it came to him that, apart from that, he had never been rejected; not by Mr Scarlatti, Dawn, debutantes, foreign lasses. Not by Patricia – until now. Something like pandemonium overtook him; deep uncertainty; unhappiness, fear and acute panic. His hands shook and his feet tightened into cramp. Sometimes he fed recklessly on illusions as he reeled emotionally about. Blood pounded through his veins. Hot and cold. Rejection petrified him.

Antonio must have snooped. Reported matters to his father. His father was a smoker; neurotic. A showdown had followed and he, Malise, had not been there to comfort Patricia. It was not, then, a case of rejection but a circumstantial case of discovery.

One evening he forgot to pull the plug after going to the lavatory. Later he returned to flush it.

On a shelf in the downstairs hall squatted a fat, black, heavy telephone with a big dial on the front of it. If making a trunk call, (anything other than local) those wishing to get in touch had to finger an O to get through to the exchange. During a ‘trunk' call pips sounded if the talking went on for over three minutes. People often rang off very suddenly on hearing these pips as it meant they were going to have to start paying all over again. Alyson, when talking to her bed-bound cousin (after six in the evening when words cost less) nearly always cut the conversation short; mid-word. ‘Bye!' she would scream as she dropped the receiver like a toasted chestnut.

To dial a number abroad it usually took ages to get through. Malise considered the idea and one afternoon, when Alyson had lumbered into the garden and everyone else seemed to be out of the way, he asked the exchange to put him through to Patricia's Lucca number.

Her bewitching voice answered ‘Pronto.'

Malise shouted ‘Hello. Malise. Malise Mc Hip here.' But she hung up on the instant.

Alyson had just returned, grumbling, to the hall.

‘I hope you're all right dear. Has the telephone been playing up? I see you are close beside it. They say it's been affected by the weather.'

Malise glared at her, pushed past and walked out of the front door. From the gravel, beside the giant cannonball, he picked up a large, colourful pheasant's feather and walked with it, through the farmyard and past the barn where, in wintry weather, he had scrambled about with the teenage Dawn. He climbed the style and wandered into a field where he saw a large number of cowpats. Searching carefully, he decided on the biggest one in view, strode towards it and placed the feather into its middle – standing it upright. Then he returned – more or less satisfied with something but he knew not what.

There never had been a television set in the house. The wireless was the one that had entertained Christian as he listened to Just William and Monday Night at Eight O'clock – but seemed to be broken. No light relief.

With glassy eyes, he re-read Mr Scarlatti's letter and drew a ring around the last sentence ‘no one has lost what I have lost – all early hopes.' Malise found it ironic that his hopes had not even been particularly early ones.

Ruggles was stationed in the piazza beneath the high apartment for which he still paid rent but, for no reason that he understood, he did not return there. Hopes for Patricia had all but fizzled out.

With the help of the solicitor, muddled thinking from a grumpy Christian and kind neighbours, the old couple were moved into The Grid. The day before this happened, a small furniture van arrived to fetch belongings destined for the old people's home. For some unspoken reason, the old man insisted that the painting of Malise as a child was to be amongst the possessions he wished to keep with him. A hazy reminder of his wife and her final icon. As it was about to be dismantled, Malise stood before the picture in his mother's bedroom; his eyes watering. His body shook and he sobbed as he pleaded ‘Patricia, for Patricia.'

‘No, Malise. It's to go to The Gwid.' Christian reasoned to no avail as Malise found unexpected words.

‘Mother. Mother. Patricia is your daughter. I am her father. Please understand.'

The picture, notwithstanding Malise's grovelling, was removed with resolute skill by lads in overalls.

Christian summoned the local doctor who ordered Malise a strong sedative and sent him to bed. He remained there as his childhood portrait was removed and re-hung in his father's new bedroom.

He stayed, on the doctor's advice, mildly sedated for weeks and reverted to childhood, but not childhood as he had lived it, for now he cried and uttered in a squeaky voice. He was muddled, futureless and hopelessly in love with a dream. He was a father. His boy's name was Antonio. His mother the girl with curling lips and a pink ribbon. Malise had metamorphosised into an irresponsible, wanting creature.

A single man who worked for the Air Force rented the main part of the farm house – accepting the arrangement that Malise and Christian share their own bedroom, small sitting room and kitchenette at the back.

Malise's wits went quickly – but not, exactly, by the day. Some weeks were better than others. On a good day he wandered in the garden as autumn and then winter came round – believing himself to be a rationalist and frenziedly anti-clerical.

Christian became his warden and, before long his ‘memowy.'

At night the younger brother read aloud from tracts that still lay beside his bed – in honour of their late mother.

Malise sometimes interrupted fearing that he had left a spotted handkerchief in a wheelbarrow at the foot of the shrubbery.

Most days he took to walking briskly, and with his head held high as in the past, to the village shop where he bought large bunches of ripe bananas. They became speckled and slimy pretty soon. Then he would take them and bury them, using a heavy spade, to the bottom of the shrubbery near to where he had fought back, crawling about with a bushman's saw to lay the enemy low.

At times he appeared to be no more than a shapeless, speedless body of anguish.

Once only, he developed a desire to make love to Christian as they lay on their hard beds in the dark. Neither man was young; Christian flabby in striped pyjamas. Malise yearning for any for any form of gratification.

‘Would you like to try it again Christian?'

‘No, thank you Malise. Never again.'

Christian was in command.