Territorial Rights (16 page)

At nine o’clock that night after trying the Pensione Sofia on the telephone and failing to get Grace, Anthea went about finding the telephone number of the Hotel Lord Byron. She wanted and did not want to talk to Arnold, whoring as he was after strange gods at the Lord Byron, Venice, lush as the Kings of Midian and the chains about their camels’ necks. … In the heat of his lusts, thought Anthea, I will bust through to his room on the telephone. And so, in process of time he will repent, he will. …

When she actually got through to the Lord Byron, she suddenly funked asking for Arnold when she pictured Mary Tiller answering the telephone in the bedroom (which, in Anthea’s imagination, was draped in shell-pink satin). After the space of three palpitations, she asked for Curran. To her astonishment she was put through to him right away. ‘Excuse me, Mr Curran’ she said timidly, ‘you don’t know me and I only know you by hearsay as a friend of my son, Robert. I’m Mrs Leaver.’

‘Good evening, Mrs Leaver, where are you calling from?’

‘I’m speaking from Birmingham where our home is.’

‘Ah,’ said Curran.

‘Do you,’ said Anthea, ‘have the faintest idea where Robert is?’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ Curran said. ‘He was here in Venice for a few days but he appears to have left.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Anthea.

‘He left rather suddenly. No doubt he has written to you,’ Curran said. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you. I’m only here for a few days myself, on business, before returning to the States.’

‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ Anthea said, feeling the weight of Curran’s objective importance and his unforeseen, casual claim to the overwhelming States. ‘I know you’ve been very kind to Robert in the past,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ Curran said. ‘I shouldn’t worry about him, Mrs Leaver, if I were you.’

‘Will he return to Paris, do you think?’

‘I don’t know his plans but if I should bump into him I’ll tell him you called.’

‘Oh, don’t do that. Please, no. He’ll think I’m interfering with his life.’

‘They do incline to think in that way,’ Curran said. This must be an expensive call for you, Mrs Leaver. I’m sorry I haven’t more information.’

‘I’m sorry to have—’

‘Not at all. Any time—’

‘It was only that my friend Grace Gregory rang me up and she sounded rather funny about Robert. And I hesitate to ask Robert’s father, I mean my husband Arnold, because he’s supposed to be having a rest. …’

The line had broken down or Curran had hung up. Anthea decided that the former had happened. She told herself, in a panic, that Curran had probably thought she had hung up angrily on her own last words ‘Arnold … he’s supposed to be having a rest’. She dialled again, and again after a while got Curran on the phone.

‘I’m sorry, we got cut off,’ she said.

Curran said, ‘Yes? I thought we had finished the conversation. Is there anything else?’

‘No. Oh, no. I just wanted to thank you for being so kind to Robert.’

‘Not at all. Don’t mention it. Goodbye, goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Curran, I’m sorry to—’ she said, but he had rung off without waiting for her answer. She bustled about in some fury after that, turned on the television, changed the channel, turned it off, then settled herself down to read her novel: it was a long one but she had almost come to the final chapter. She preferred to read in a chair before going to bed. When she read in bed before going to sleep the novel would lie on her bedside table affecting her dreams so that in a sense, by the morning, she had finished the whole book without actually reading it, and without remembering a word.

Matt, Joyce and Beryl finished their supper in semi-silence, looking enquiringly at each other. Mark, John and Maimie were asleep and only Khorinthia lay awake in her cot looking the image of Beryl as she must have been. The letter from Colin lay open on the table like a time-bomb. Since ever she could remember, Joyce had been waiting for this moment.

At length Matt ventured as he raised his beer-can to his lips, ‘This had to happen, I guess.’

The rain poured outside.

Somewhere up the street a car pulled up.

Joyce’s arms, rounded and beautiful, were propped on the table. The baby began to cry. Beryl looked at Matt as Joyce got up to attend to Khorinthia.

‘It’s your choice,’ she murmured.

‘What choice is there, what choice ever, in the world of today?’ he asked violently. Then, drinking his beer, he sighed, ‘I could take the job for a limited time. …’ He reached for his guitar.

Anthea felt sleepy, but she wanted to read on. She was thinking of making another phone call to Venice. She decided to wait an hour till Grace was sure to have returned to the Pensione Sofia. Sure to be home by midnight. … Anthea fell asleep in her chair. She did not dream of the book but of her grandmother from Scotland who used to chant to her:

For her I’ll dare the billow’s roar,

For her I’ll trace a distant shore,

That Indian wealth may lustre throw

Around my Highland lassie, O.

T
UESDAY AFTERNOON.
C
URRAN HAD
spent the morning with his Italian lawyer who had been summoned overnight from Milan, and even with this old acquaintance Curran had seen the poison of Robert’s missive working. The man was plainly uncertain how much Curran had to hide. If there were indeed two halves of a man’s body in the garden of the Pensione Sofia, the lawyer pointed out, and should they be exhumed, it might be easy for Curran to deny knowledge of them, but certainly he would be involved in a scandal such as the newspapers of Europe would rejoice in for weeks on end. Yes, said the lawyer, it was true, he was sure, that Curran had not murdered Pancev (imagine it!) but there was no doubt he had known Pancev well. …

Then, the question of drugs. Boys and drugs. This is Italy, and you know you would be interrogated. Yes, the young man Leaver would eventually, of course, go to prison for calumny; that was, if he could be found, and if he could be proved to have written these accusations voluntarily. But the publicity would be enormous. On the other hand, if there were not two halves of a body. …

‘I’m afraid there are,’ said Curran.

‘Then the women are guilty of a crime. Mutilation and concealment of a corpse. Would they accuse you of complicity? And the Countess de Winter?’

‘I don’t take or traffic in drugs,’ was Curran’s answer.

The lawyer looked at the pavemented floor of Curran’s room in the Hotel Byron where he sat with his client, and smiled wisely.

The two women at the Pensione Sofia. … I don’t know,’ Curran said. They might say anything.’

‘I tell you,’ said the lawyer. ‘You’re a wealthy American and you have this young man who says he’s been kidnapped. Why don’t you decide to pay them something? I can arrange for a colleague here in Venice to treat with the kidnappers as soon as we know who they are. They’ll be in touch with you, of course. They’ve calculated your reaction very finely. But you must not inform the police because it’s illegal to treat with kidnappers. The magistrate will block the money. In fact this advice I’m giving you is illegal. I just want to help.’

‘Thank you,’ Curran said. ‘I think that’s all.’

The lawyer said, ‘The young man has written under duress.’

‘I don’t think so. I think he’s joined the gang.’

‘What a monster! How did you ever get in the hands of such a youth?’

‘It was the dangerous element that I liked, I suppose. When I met him he was a prostitute on the streets of Paris, posing as a student. As in fact he was, on paper. He has a good mind, too, but … I always felt the danger. I didn’t … I didn’t think. … Oh, well. I’ll think over your advice and let you know.’

‘Be careful what you say on the telephone. Very careful.’

‘I always am.’

The lawyer was in a hurry to leave. It was past two o’clock. Curran wanted to miss lunch; he went for a walk in the cold bright air of the great Piazza, wondering if he, alone, of all the people around him, the sauntering tourists who walked round the arcades and the purposeful Venetians who crossed the square in order to get to the other side, was afflicted with a living nightmare.

He went down to the quay and looked at the scene, with its coffee-table picture charm, along the Riva degli Schiavoni. The gondolas were lined up in wintry abeyance between the mooring-poles; some drivers stood on the landing-stages beside their water-taxis chattering amongst each other under the shadow of the Doges’ Palace, enviably in full charge of their own history. Curran felt an urge to go back to the Lord Byron and wait for a message from Robert’s end. It would surely come. He felt an equal urge to avoid the hotel for that very reason. He could not remember a time in his adult life when he had not fully coped with his own life, not to mention the lives of others.

‘Curran, I want to speak to you.’

He turned to find Mary Tiller by his side dressed in her mink coat and her tight boots, with her brass-coloured curls arranged neatly; and yet she looked unusually in disorder, perhaps because her eyes were wider open than usual. ‘I want you to know, Mr Curran, that I’m not a poisoner.’

‘You may call me Curran, Mrs Tiller.’

She relaxed a little and smiled. ‘Curran, I am not a poisoner. Whatever Robert has told you, it isn’t true. My first husband died of typhoid in Boulogne; I have the death certificate. I wasn’t there. I—’

‘You’ve had a letter, too, Mary?’

‘I have nothing to hide,’ she said.

‘Don’t you?’

‘Well, we all have something, I suppose, to hide but—’

‘Not necessarily what Robert says it is.’

‘Not what he says. That’s right. Did he tell you about me,’ Mary said, ‘in that letter you got from him at the Pensione Sofia yesterday? What did he tell you about me?’

‘What did he tell you about me?’ said Curran.

‘I feel embarrassed,’ said Mary, ‘Has he written like that to anyone else?’

‘Probably quite a few people have received letters from him,’ Curran said, ‘The more the better in my opinion. So that we can know for a fact that he’s mad.’

They had started to walk together, back to St Mark’s Square,

‘Why do you say that?’ she said.

‘The wilder his accusations, and the more numerous, the more easily we can prove him mad.’

‘Do you want to prove him mad?’

‘Yes.’

Mary said she would like to go into Florian’s for tea. On the way across the square she said, ‘He told you he was leaving Venice, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘Don’t you think it possible he is still hereabouts? How would he be able to have these letters delivered if he’s gone far away?’

‘That’s a point,’ said Curran.

‘He must have a friend who’s delivering these letters,’ Mary said. ‘Maybe we’re being followed. I feel creepy.’

‘So do I,’ said Curran.

‘You sound as if you mean it.’

They drifted self-consciously into Florian’s for tea. They settled in one of the decorative seats with a good view of the entrance.

‘You know,’ said Mary, ‘I don’t think Robert’s mad. But he might be evil. What’s his object?’

‘I would like to see the letter he sent you,’ said Curran.

‘But naturally you won’t show me the letter he sent to you,’ she said.

‘Will you show Arnold his letter?’ Curran said.

‘My God! You don’t think I’d let it be made public, do you?’ Mary said. ‘It smears my name. All invention of course, except for a few bits here and there goodness knows how he found out about my affairs. But mud sticks. I couldn’t, I really couldn’t, show anyone that letter.’ She spoke haughtily, almost rejecting Curran’s friendliness. He could not decide whether she was suspicious of him for some reason, or whether she was simply frightened.

‘Mary, are you suspicious of me for some reason?’ he said.

‘Why should I be?’

‘What did Robert say about me in his letter?’

‘I wouldn’t repeat it,’ she said.

‘But you don’t know if it’s true or not? This is a very unnerving situation.’

‘Robert has foreseen that, I think. Robert must have had this in mind for at least a couple of years,’ she said, ‘because before that he didn’t know of my existence. Since then, he must have been collecting information, snooping into my life, distorting it, and now these inventions. When I think of how I went round Venice yesterday so worried about him. … Well, I’m going to tear up the letter and forget it. We shouldn’t even discuss Robert; he’s not worth it.’

‘That’s true. But we are also trying to protect ourselves, aren’t we?’

‘You may be,’ she said.

‘The best way would be to go to the police. Do you have the courage? We should all have the courage—’

‘I would sue when I got home to England, I really would.’

‘You might have to sue here. It’s an offence committed on this territory.’

She said, ‘I have to think of Arnold, don’t I? He thinks the world of his good name and he’s terrified of his wife Anthea.’

‘It might be good for Arnold,’ said Curran, ‘if he, too, got a letter from Robert.’

‘He’s under the impression that Robert’s gone back to Paris. He said last week he didn’t think Robert would ever stay here and write his thesis on that church.’

‘The Santa Maria Formosa?’ As Curran said this it occurred to him that this church might well be a focus-point for contact with Robert. Robert had been studying the architecture; he had been seen in the church and outside it the day he disappeared.

Curran now lost interest in Mary but waited politely till she had finished her tea. He walked back with her to the Lord Byron hotel. There were no messages for him. He phoned Violet. ‘Any message for me?’ ‘No’ ‘Thanks. See you later.’ He then set out for the Pensione Sofia by way of the Campo di Santa Maria Formosa. He found himself looking at the passing faces, suspiciously, so that they looked back with enquiry and suspicion, too.

As he walked, he went over in his mind the meeting with his lawyer that morning: ‘… the women are guilty of a crime. Mutilation and concealment of a corpse. Would they, would the Countess de Winter, accuse you of complicity?’

I will of course leave Venice, he thought. I’ll get out, and quick. But, as if his lawyer himself were arguing the point, he argued with himself. To leave would go against me. Where could I go that a scandal wouldn’t touch me? I’m not a Nobody. Even if I were a Nobody. … And besides, he thought, I would like to see Robert. I would like to see him just once more and tell him what I think of him.