The Dividing Stream (14 page)

‘‘I hate being alone,’’ Pamela said.

The children soon forgot about Karen as they gulped
cassatas
and competed in blowing bubbles with their straws in tall, misty glasses of iced orangeade. ‘‘Children, your manners,’’ Mrs. Bennett reproved. ‘‘Such a bad example for the Italians.’’ But they took no notice of her. Colin put out a hand to the amulet which hung, on a fine silver chain, around Enzo’s neck: ‘‘He wears a necklace,’’ he said.

‘‘
La Madonna
,’’ Enzo said.

‘‘It’s the Virgin,’’ Pamela explained. ‘‘He must be a Catholic.’’

Colin twisted the chain until it bit into the flesh of the Florentine’s neck, and then released it with a laugh in which Enzo joined, glad to have provided some amusement. ‘‘I wonder if he’d take me to church with him.’’

‘‘You don’t want to go to a Catholic service,’’ Pamela said.

Colin blushed. ‘‘Yes, I do,’’ he said with a sudden sulkiness.

‘‘Granny, Colin wants to go to a Catholic service. He can’t, can he!’’

‘‘What, dear? … Oh, I don’t see why not.’’

‘‘But it’s Popish!’’

Mrs. Bennett laughed and looked towards her grandson, only to find that he had already ceased to be interested in the discussion. He was looking at Max, who sat sideways in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, as he stared at the Piazzale. His heavy, Teutonic good looks seemed to have the consistency and greyness of dough; under the thick red eyebrows the small green eyes peered out unhappily; the fingers of one hand beat an incessant tattoo on the underneath of the table.

Colin knew that his father was suffering and he guessed, though he could not be sure, that it was somehow because of Karen. He wanted to comfort Max, to touch his ceaselessly drumming hand or to say some word that would cheer him; but he could not do it, was too awkward, even feared a snub. Then his impotence in the face of the misery of someone whom he loved expressed itself in a sudden hatred of Karen. He thought of the cutting phrases he would like to use to her; she was an outsider whom Max had brought in, she didn’t belong, she was not part of them.… In this baffled mixture of love for his father and hatred for Karen, he remained staring at Max until Mrs. Bennett said: ‘‘A penny for your thoughts.’’ The boy did not answer, and Mrs. Bennett said: ‘‘Such a strange expression. You frighten me when you look like that.’’

‘‘Karen has gone,’’ Max said.

‘‘Gone?’’ Mrs. Bennett queried.

‘‘I’ve just seen her. She’s walking back to Florence.’’

‘‘Alone?’’

‘‘No. I think there was someone with her. I can’t be sure.’’

‘‘Mr. Westfield,’’ a voice said behind them. ‘‘Welcome to the Piazzale!’’ It was Lena, in a full purple skirt, a blouse of elaborate ‘‘
Broderie anglaise
’’ worn off the shoulders, and a pair of jet ear-rings that swung back and forth, tugging at her almost lobeless ears, whenever she spoke. This was evidently not what Mrs. Bennett would call one of her ‘‘ sensible’’ days. ‘‘Hello, children,’’ she said, having long since made friends with them. ‘‘Mr. Westfield, I wish to present——’’ She put out an arm as if she were tugging on an invisible rope in order to get her young man to come nearer—‘‘ Signor Commino.’’

They had all heard of Signor Commino, who worked at an English travel agency, collected stamps, butterflies and fossils, and wished to marry Lena. The children now stared at him with interest.… But, oh dear, he wouldn’t do, they at once decided, they knew they were going to giggle. He was short and he was almost completely spherical, with two rabbit-teeth in front, a bulging dome of a forehead, and a brief nose half-way down on which there rested an enormous pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

He was a person of extreme good-nature, but the children did not realize this, imagining that his ugliness must be stamped through and through him like the lettering on Brighton Rock.

‘‘Won’t you join us?’’ Max suggested apathetically.

‘‘Oh, no, Mr. Westfield, we do not wish to infringe the family gathering.’’ But Lena had already pulled back the chair beside Max, waiting only for him to repeat the invitation. As, of course, he did.

‘‘Well,’’ said Signor Commino in English to the two children, ‘‘and how do we like our Florence?’’

Colin and Pamela exchanged agonized glances, until choking back her giggles, Pamela said: ‘‘Very much, thank you.’’

Signor Commino took a small, enamelled box out of the pocket of his greasy brown suit and, watched by the Italians and the two English children, proceeded to take a pinch of snuff. He grunted two or three times, cleared his throat, and then, pulling out a handkerchief, began to dust the vast, uniform, outward curve of his chest and stomach as if it were a mantelpiece.

‘‘What’s that?’’ Pamela asked.

‘‘
Starnutiglio
. I don’t know how you say it in English.
Starnutiglio
, Lena,’’ he said, interrupting her in a one-sided conversation with Max.

‘‘Sneezing-powder.’’

Colin and Pamela stuffed handkerchiefs to their mouths, and catching the infection of their mood, the two Italians now also began to shake with suppressed giggles.

‘‘What have we seen of our beautiful city?’’ Signor Commino asked, unaware of the amusement he was causing. He scratched with his forefinger at the tuft of hair that divided the bald, shiny front of his head (at the back there was a luxuriant bush, which lay over his collar and scattered dandruff almost to the waist of his jacket). ‘‘Have we visited the historical Palazzo Vecchio? H’m, h’m? Or the Uffizi Galleria? Or the magnificent and stony Pitti Palace? H’m!’’ The children only continued to sway and shudder soundlessly before him, their hands to their lips. ‘‘Perhaps we are too young for such treasure.’’ He trumpeted into the handkerchief with which he had been dusting himself, and suddenly raising his left arm above his head, began to click the fingers as loudly as if they were castanets. A waiter hurried over. ‘‘What for you all?’’ Signor Commino asked.

‘‘I think they’ve had all that’s good for them,’’ Mrs. Bennett answered for the speechless children, at the same time giving them a scolding glance and kicking Enzo by mistake for Colin under the table.

When the waiter had taken the order, Signor Commino turned to Pamela: ‘‘Today I have been to Viareggio,’’ he announced. ‘‘Do you also bath?’’

It was too much for them. Like water from a geyser, their merriment hissed and scalded out. They bent double, they clutched themselves and then clutched each other, Enzo and Rodolfo joined in, the glasses rocked and rattled on the table, Mrs. Bennett expostulated, Signor Commino looked surprised and then hurt, Lena appeared to be about to burst into tears.…

But it was soon over. Mute and white-faced, as if they had just been sick, the two children sat in shame before their elders. They knew that they had set the Italian boys a bad example, annoyed their father and grandmother, and hurt poor Lena. About Signor Commino they unfortunately did not care.

‘‘After that exhibition, I think we’d better go,’’ Mrs. Bennett said, suddenly looking even more tired than Max.

‘‘Yes,’’ said Max. ‘‘They’re obviously over-excited.’’

‘‘I’m sorry,’’ Colin muttered, in genuine remorse.

When they had said good-bye and were making their way to the steps, Lena ran after them, brandishing Karen’s bag. Colin and Pamela were walking last of the procession, and she gave it to them; saying at the same time in gentle reproof: ‘‘That wasn’t amiable of you. You made Signor Commino very unhappy. No, it was not amiable. I was surprised.’’

‘‘I’m sorry, Lena,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘We didn’t mean to be rude. We just couldn’t help ourselves. We tried to stop, but that only made it worse and worse.… But, Lena,’’ she rushed on, ‘‘ you mustn’t marry him—you mustn’t, mustn’t, mustn’t! Promise!’’

A strangely different Lena answered in a cold voice, ‘‘Please mind your own business,’’ and turned and walked away.

‘‘Pamela—what a thing to say!’’ her brother exclaimed in horror. ‘‘How could you?’’

‘‘But he’s awful. And I’m fond of Lena, and I can’t bear to think of her married to someone like that. He’s fat, and he’s ugly, and he’s
old
.’’

‘‘Lena told us he was only thirty-three.’’

‘‘Well, he looks old. And that awful sneezing-powder that he takes. And did you notice how his hair grew behind? Oh, he’s an ogre. Lena
can’t
marry him. Besides,’’ she added, ‘‘she doesn’t love him. She loves Daddy.’’

‘‘Loves Daddy!’’ Colin laughed. ‘‘ Oh, bosh!’’

‘‘No, I’m sure of it,’’ Pamela said seriously. ‘‘You remember how Miss Phillips loved him too—Mummy was always joking about it. I suppose he’s attractive to women of that sort. They want to mother him, and they’re afraid that they’re getting old and unattractive, and it may be their last chance. I feel sorry for Lena. It must be terrible for her. And having that awful mother, too, with the pain in the abdomen.’’

Mrs. Bennett, walking with Max, while Rodolfo and Enzo followed behind, suddenly gripped her son-in-law’s arm on a narrow path which wound down through a tangled mesh of bushes. ‘‘What’s that?’’ she exclaimed.

‘‘What’s what?’’

‘‘There! There’s someone walking there, on the other side. I can hear him.… Look, his face! There! There!’’ In a patch of moonlight between the branches of a tree she momentarily thought she saw the face of the old man of her walk; he was smiling, revealing the two long, decaying eye-teeth which gleamed, like the collapsed bridge of his nose, his forehead and the lenses of his glasses, through the surrounding darkness. Then he moved on. ‘‘He’s following us,’’ she said. ‘‘I knew that he was.’’

Max rushed to where she pointed, plunged into the bushes and searched up and down. ‘‘No one,’’ he said. ‘‘You must have imagined it.’’

‘‘But I didn’t imagine it! I tell you, I saw him. I couldn’t mistake him. How could I?’’

‘‘Mistake who?’’ Max asked in bewilderment.

‘‘Oh, nothing.’’ She sank on to a grass mound and put a hand to her forehead. ‘‘Perhaps I did imagine it,’’ she said.

‘‘You’re tired,’’ Max assured her. ‘‘It was the moonlight on a branch, or a cat, or something.’’

Meanwhile Rodolfo and Enzo had come up to ask what was the matter. When Max told them, they both began to look excitedly among the bushes where Max himself had already searched. Suddenly Enzo gave a triumphant whoop. ‘‘
Ecco
!’’

‘‘Have you found him?’’ Max asked, hastening to the spot. And then, in disappointment, ‘‘ Oh, it’s only a pair of spectacles.’’

The Florentine emerged carrying the familiar gold-rimmed glasses, fastened at one side with a piece of rag and cracked horizontally across both lenses. He showed them to Mrs. Bennett, but she at once turned her head.

‘‘
Rotto
,’’ he said.

‘‘Yes,’’ said Max. ‘‘ No good to anyone now. I should throw them away.’’

The Florentine raised his right arm and, silhouetted against the illuminated city, hurled the spectacles downwards and outwards into the dark void. For a moment, they flashed as the moonlight caught them, then they were lost.

‘‘That’s how you should learn to throw,’’ Pamela said to her brother. ‘‘But where did he find them?’’

‘‘In the bushes.’’

‘‘Is that why you stopped? … Do let’s go on, Daddy.’’

‘‘You go on, children. Wait for us at the bottom. I’m feeling a little giddy and want to sit down,’’ Mrs. Bennett said.

‘‘Oh, Granny, let me stay with you,’’ Colin offered.

‘‘No, you heard me telling you to go on,’’ Mrs. Bennett answered with an unwonted asperity. ‘‘ Your father will stay with me.’’

‘‘Granny, are you really all right?’’ Pamela asked, coming over and putting a hand on the old woman’s head.

‘‘Yes, yes—don’t fuss so!’’ Mrs. Bennett cried in exasperation. ‘‘I only want to rest.’’

‘‘Let’s have a race—to the bottom,’’ Colin said.

‘‘Yes, to the bottom, right to the bottom! Enzo and Rodolfo must play too,’’ Pamela exclaimed. ‘‘A race, a race!’’ she exclaimed excitedly. ‘‘But no unfair starts.’’ She caught Enzo’s shirt and pulled him back beside her; and the Florentine, momentarily puzzled, at once understood, crouching like a trained athlete for the word to be off. Meanwhile Rodolfo, examining the wall which ran beyond the path, realized that by jumping down its easy seven feet he would save a hundred yards. He was sure he would win.

‘‘You start us,’’ Pamela said to her father.

‘‘All right.’’ Max raised a handkerchief in his right hand and shouted, ‘‘On your marks—get set—go!’’ The handkerchief descended and they all thudded off into the darkness, except for Rodolfo who, with the agility of a cat, jumped on to the wall and then, like Tosca flinging herself off the battlements, leapt out of sight.

‘‘To be young,’’ Mrs. Bennett sighed. Looking down at her Max saw that she was weeping, he supposed from her fright, large tears glittering like beads in the innumerable folds and wrinkles of her face.

‘‘Why, what’s the matter?’’ he asked. ‘‘ You mustn’t worry about that scare of yours. It could have happened to anyone.’’

‘‘But not the glasses,’’ she said softly.

‘‘The glasses?’’

Before he could search this mysterious reply further, a high-pitched yelping, as of a dog in pain, broke the close and resinous silence of the hill. The yelping went on, and through it Pamela could be heard calling: ‘‘Daddy, Daddy,’’ in a voice which grew louder and louder until it ended in a despairing wail.

Max hurried down, leaping the steps two and three at a time, and Mrs. Bennett with a remarkable agility hurried behind him.

‘‘Colin’s hurt,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘ He’s in awful pain. He won’t stop screaming.’’ Her face gleamed white and panicky in the moonlight.

Enzo and Rodolfo were bending over the English boy, one on either side of him, while he writhed and twisted between them so that they could not see the extent of his injuries. Suddenly he stopped his inhuman yelping and began repeating with a strange hiccoughing sound: ‘‘Granny, Granny, Granny!’’

‘‘Yes, I’m here, dear. What have you done to yourself? What’s the matter?’’

The old woman knelt on the path, the Italians making room for her, and took the boy in her arms.

‘‘What is it, darling?’’ she repeated. ‘‘ What did you do?’’