The Beast (11 page)

‘Aren't our girls good enough for you?' one old
fisherman
had asked one day.

‘Oh yes, absolutely,' Andrew had said reassuringly. But he never went out with one.

Perhaps, the town gossips hinted, when he drove off in his red sports car, it wasn't just to go and see friends, as he always claimed when they asked him where he was going. Perhaps he had a
fidanzata
somewhere. In Verona, or Brescia, or even Venice?

‘No,' Andrew said, and smiled politely.

And the truth was—and more and more people came to believe it as the years passed, and the first of October regularly brought the pale English artist to the town—that Andrew never had sex with anyone. And never wanted it. He either didn't like it, or just wasn't interested; he wasn't sure, and didn't care, which. He had tried a couple of times, and hadn't gained any pleasure whatever from it. Sex somehow belonged to his birth, and he never—almost never—thought about his birth. Sex belonged to a wild, unmannered world. Sex belonged to faces with expressions. Sex was a limitation—just as hunger was a limitation. He couldn't—unfortunately—do without food—but do without sex he could, and did.

Everything, he felt, as far as was humanly possible, had to be eliminated from his world, except for good manners—which made life on the outside, as it were, possible—and his painting—which made life on the inside possible. Perhaps, when he had one day—as he
would
—painted his perfect face, his face without any expression, he would allow himself, or be able, to relax, to indulge, and permit
himself
the so-called pleasures of the flesh. But until such a day, he was obliged, compelled, to renounce everything. To
renounce
everything, in order to have—everything. It was, he
thought, as if he were a priest. Or an angel. Or a slave …

But at the moment, he was just the pale odd Englishman walking to the jetty in the port of Desenzano, to meet—an anonymous caller. Who would it be, he wondered. Who could it be? It was—though clearly not a friend—equally clearly someone who knew him. Oh well—he would know soon.

At two twenty-eight precisely—he had met and talked to as many people as he had reckoned on meeting—he walked onto the jetty. There were old men fishing there, and old women walking, and young couples and school-children sitting. He knew some of them, but none of them gave him any particularly meaningful glance.

At two-thirty he had reached the end of the jetty. He stood there, and gazed around. He looked at the small, tranquil port, whose little boats were covered for the winter. He looked at the town of Sirmione, across the bay. He looked on the lake side of the jetty, where the open water was rougher, and was breaking on the boulders dumped there. He looked back at the waterfront of Desenzano, with its hotels mainly closed, its air of waiting for the summer. He looked up at the cold blue sky, where jets were sketching white patterns in the air. He looked up and down, and round and round, and while he saw things and people he was familiar with, and things and people he had grown fond of, he saw no one who could possibly have been the anonymous caller.

He would wait, he decided, exactly ten minutes; and if no one came up to him, he would go home. How irritating it was! What a waste of time! And for it to happen here! In London, or any big city, one might have thought it possible. But here, in this place he had chosen as his winter home simply because it was so neat and orderly, and
seemingly made for refugees, where the people were so polite, and the air so peaceful and faded and perpetually out of season—where even the lake and the landscape were, in their way, good-mannered—no. Such a thing definitely shouldn't have happened.

At two-forty he went home.

*

He didn't receive another call for eight days. But then, one morning, after he had returned late from having finally had his dinner in Venice with Tony and May, the phone rang, and when he answered—it was the voice.

‘Hello Andrew,' it whispered.

‘Oh, hello,' Andrew said.

‘You were very rude you know, not turning up.'

‘Oh come now. Stop being ridiculous. I was there. I waited for ten minutes.'

‘That's impossible. I would have seen you.'

‘You were there? On the jetty? At Desenzano?'

‘Yes.'

‘And I know you?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's not true. I would have seen you.
You
weren't there.'

‘I was.'

‘Well, what do you look like? I remember everyone who was there.'

‘I'm about six foot tall,' the voice breathed. ‘My hair is fair. I have a pale face. I was wearing clean blue jeans, a brown leather jacket, and a red scarf.'

‘Oh,' Andrew said. And then, because he was too
confused
, suddenly, to know what else to say—he hung up. And as soon as he had done so, without even worrying about whether it was rude or not, he took the phone off the hook.

It was grotesque. And now, once again, frightening.
Because clearly—having described in such clear detail Andrew himself—the caller
had
been there on the jetty—or had at least seen him going there. But who could it have been? There hadn't been a single person who could conceivably have been English; and the caller
was
English, he was sure. Or if not, he spoke it perfectly. So—he must have seen him walking there. Where was he staying? In some hotel, overlooking the jetty? Obviously. And yet—

And yet, Andrew thought, looking apprehensively round the hot untidy studio, he had a feeling that that wasn't the explanation. It had to be, of course, but
somehow
he felt that it wasn't. It had to be. It had to be …

Outside it was grey and bleak again.

*

He sat in the apartment all day, without moving. He didn't even look at the painting he was working on, that soon—in just a couple of days maybe—would be ready for that final, fatal brushstroke. It was a good painting, a very good painting—as good, perhaps, as the one the first anonymous call had ruined—but he couldn't contemplate working on it. No. He just sat there, still, fighting back a thought that kept on occurring to him. Fighting it back, telling himself that it was ridiculous, telling himself that he knew it wasn't true. He sat there till seven o'clock in the evening, and fought it back in the now dark
apartment
. And only when he realized that he couldn't fight it back indefinitely did he allow himself to consider it: to consider, quite seriously, whether he were going mad, and had imagined all those telephone calls. Was it possible, he asked himself. Was it possible that a childhood and youth spent exclusively studying, being grateful, and being polite, had turned his brain? Was it possible that an almost total lack of love, or even affection, had unhinged him and made
him see reality from an odd angle? Was it perhaps possible that one or both his unknown parents had been mad? Or was it even possible—and he had entertained the idea a few times before—that Edith Smythe had been mad and
had
, in fact, been his mother, and had invented all those stories of his birth for some twisted reason of her own? And was it possible, he asked himself finally, that if he were not precisely imagining the phone calls, that he
himself
was making them? Calling, somehow, himself …

No. No.
No
. Of course it wasn't possible. There was someone staying in the town who lived very near here and had seen him as he walked to the jetty. That was it. That
had
to be it.

And yet—

He got up and turned the light on, to find a heavier sweater. He was, in spite of the very efficient central
heating
, freezing.

It was two days later, as he was about to go out to dinner—out to dinner with an old Countess who lived in a grand villa not far away, who had bought two of his paintings in London, and was charmed by his
middle-European
politeness—that he received his next call.

The voice whispered, ‘Hello Andrew.'

Softly, Andrew said, ‘Hello.'

And this time, he told himself, he wouldn't hang up. This time he wanted to question the caller. He
wanted
to meet him, and put an end to all this.

‘You took your phone off the hook the other morning.'

‘I'm sorry,' Andrew murmured.

‘I was trying to call you all day.'

‘I'm sorry,' he repeated.

‘I would like to see you, you know.'

‘Yes,' Andrew whispered. He was beginning to sound,
he heard, like the voice himself. ‘Where?', he said.

‘Well,' the voice breathed—and then hesitated. ‘Do you know a villa about ten kilometres out of Desenzano, on the way to Mantova? It's set back from the road. The Villa Sorano, I think it's called.'

‘Yes,' Andrew whispered helplessly, miserably. The Villa Sorano was where the Countess he was dining with lived …

‘Well, in front of it, on the other side of the road, there's a restaurant and night-club. It's closed for the winter now, but—'

‘Yes,' Andrew interrupted. ‘I know it.'

‘Would it be all right to meet there then? In about half an hour's time, let's say?'

‘Yes,' Andrew whispered. Then, ‘How shall I recognize you?'

The voice laughed. ‘I don't think there'll be too many people out there tonight. But just in case—' the voice laughed again, ‘I'll be wearing a blue suit, with a white shirt, and a blue tie with white stripes. And a dark blue overcoat.'

‘Oh,' Andrew said, and carefully, as if he were afraid of bruising it, lay the receiver down—though he didn't hang up. Then he backed across the room and looked at
himself
in the mirror. At his pale face. At his fair hair. And at his blue suit and white shirt and blue-and-white tie …

He closed his eyes.

He must have been standing by the window, and the caller must have walked along the road and looked up and seen him there. And the fact that the suggested meeting place was the night club in front of the Villa Sorano was just a coincidence. Just an extraordinary coincidence …

He opened his eyes and stared at the receiver, lying there on the table, and wished he had replaced it. Or
wished that he dared approach it now, and replace it. But he didn't.

He stared at it.

He stared at it for ten minutes. Who
was
the caller, he wondered again wretchedly. And why was he persecuting him? Why him, Andrew Smythe? Why, why, why? Could it be, as he had felt—illogically, at the time, he had believed—that very first evening, that the voice was something to do with the past? Could it be that this person was
someone
who knew something about his birth, and his parents, and the first year of his life? Could it be? A mad father, perhaps, come to claim his son. Someone who had murdered his father and had, in some way, recognized him, and now was coming to murder the son—for fear that he wanted revenge. Or some relation of someone his father had murdered … No! Of course not! Murder, revenge! In Desenzano. It was all madness. It was just someone playing a joke on him. It was. But nevertheless, he was very, very frightened.

He tip-toed back across the studio, and as quietly and gently as possible, lifted the receiver.

‘Hello,' the voice breathed.

He would, still, have liked to talk, to say something, to beg the caller to identify himself, and explain the reason for his calls. But he didn't dare. So, silently—but knowing full well that the voice was aware of all he was doing—he pressed his fingers down on the phone, and cut off the communication.

Then he looked in his address book, dialled the Countess's number, and told her bluntly—with the most perfunctory apologies—that he couldn't come to dinner tonight.

The old woman sounded quite stunned, and told him
that she was not used to people cancelling their
engagements
with her five minutes before they were due to arrive, and that while, of course, one expected such behaviour from some people, from one's friends, and from him in particular, one didn't—

‘I'm terribly sorry,' Andrew muttered, and hung up on her, too.

Then he put on his dark blue overcoat, turned out the lights in the apartment, and took the lift down stairs—hearing, as he did so, his telephone ringing. Let it, he thought. Then he walked out of his building, crossed the road, got into his car, revved the engine up noisily, and began to drive slowly down the lake-front, over which a fog was falling. He drove through the town, and up the narrow streets that led out of it. And then, suddenly—checking in his mirror that there was no one behind—he turned into a side-alley, drove down it for thirty yards, and stopped. He turned off his engine. Then he sat in the car for almost half an hour, without moving.

At the end of that half hour, he got quietly out, locked the door, and started to walk home.

He didn't go straight home, however. He went round the back-streets, and slipped furtively through empty squares, looking over his shoulder all the time. So, he thought, shivering—for it was a bitter night—must the persecuted feel in times of war. Frightened of shadows, and both terrified and relieved that there was a fog, that swam around the street lights, made one feel out of touch with the world, and made one's footsteps, however lightly one trod, echo and resound. Fog; that hid both oneself, and one's pursuers …

It was thick in the upper town, but by the time he got back to the lake, it was impenetrable. No one, he thought,
could see him sneaking home through this. On the other hand—as trees and one or two passers-by loomed up and quickly vanished—somebody could be very close to one, and one would never know …

He went in the back entrance of his building, and climbed the stairs, rather than take the lift. And when he was, once again, back in the apartment, he didn't turn any lights on. He simply went into his studio and sat by the phone, almost challenging it to ring, and looked at the face that tomorrow he would finish, and which he could just make out in the yellowish glow that came through the windows. Oh if only, he thought, he could get it right. If only this once. Then all his years of waiting, of trying, all his formal, measured life, would be vindicated. He would even forgive the anonymous caller for having so disturbed him; disturbed him to such an extent that he had caused him to be rude. To be unpardonably rude. Tomorrow, he decided, after he had finished the painting, he would write a long letter to the Countess. She would never forgive him of course—some things couldn't be forgiven—but still—