The Dividing Stream (23 page)

For example, the young man from Cambridge who was to visit her that morning had gleefully informed the friend with whom he was travelling: ‘‘She’s said to be fabulously rich. Her husband left six hundred thousand.’’ He tossed out the remark as he sipped at his coffee, but at heart he was deeply impressed. In his wallet was the letter of introduction which would take him to all this imagined wealth.

He was typical of the many visitors who climbed the steep, dusty path in the heat of the day, and Lady Newton knew how to deal with him. She was shrewd and she guessed at once that here was yet another undergraduate who was using a slim artistic gift to help himself up the Italian social ladder. He explained how his interest in painting had taken him to some of the leading Florentine houses; and he hinted, tactfully, that her introduction would take him to the rest. He wore a bright shirt and linen trousers, and fanned himself with a panama hat with a wide green-and-red band. He talked of the author who had sent him to visit her, without realizing that she had long since taken one of her unaccountable dislikes to the man, and he exclaimed extravagantly on the beauties of a garden which she knew to be out of hand and pictures which she knew to be negligible.

He was only nineteen and it was therefore perhaps unkind of her suddenly to cut him short:

‘‘But I mustn’t keep you any longer, Mr.—— Mr.—— I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name. It was so kind of you to trek all the way up this hill to see a lonely old woman. I won’t come with you to the gate because there’s a bus which goes’’—she looked at her watch—‘‘ in exactly ten minutes and I’d only delay you. I’m not very quick these days.… Good-bye, good-bye.’’

She turned abruptly; and then, with none of the feebleness she had just ascribed to herself, proceeded to march back to the villa where she poured herself the drink her guest had not been offered. ‘‘Jackanapes!’’ she said, and bawled with fearful stridency: ‘‘
Senta
, Maria!’’ She paused, a glass of gin gripped in one fist, but no answer came. ‘‘M-a-r-i-a!’’ she shouted again.

After many seconds there was a rustling, scraping, shuffling noise from the corridor as if some vast wounded animal were dragging itself along; but the old woman who eventually appeared was of paradoxical minuteness. She was filthy, with greasy white hair slipping out of a rag-like turban, feet in what had once been a pair of Lady Newton’s discarded bedroom slippers, and a few teeth so rotted that they looked like burned-out matches stuck haphazard in her gums. One claw-like hand was already cocked over her ear in expectancy of what her mistress would say.

‘‘I—am—working,’’ Lady Newton said loudly and slowly in Italian. She gulped some gin. ‘‘I—am—working,’’ she repeated, and with each word the old servant’s nose twitched as if she were smelling rather than hearing what was being said. ‘‘Lunch—will—be—at—two. I—must—not—be—disturbed.’’ She then gestured the woman out of the door, turned the key and, curling herself up on a sofa where an ancient spaniel already wheezed and snuffled, at once went to sleep.

She was woken by the sound of Maisie Brandon knocking, rattling the door-handle and calling: ‘‘Are you there, N.?’’ The spaniel was languorously scratching a tattered ear. ‘‘I say, N.?’’ Lady Newton jumped up, pulled open one of the card-indexes on her desk and arranged some sheets of foolscap-paper; then she growled: ‘‘What the hell is it?’’ Her voice had an amazing range, from the soft, apparently timid soprano of the governess or lady-companion she so often appeared to be, to a
basso profondo
.

‘‘It’s me—Maisie. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’ve brought that boy.’’

‘‘Boy? What boy?’’

‘‘The boy I told you about. At breakfast this morning.’’

‘‘You never told me about any boy.’’ But the door was at last unlocked. ‘‘Really, Maisie, once and for all, you must understand that when I’m working, I’m working. And must not be disturbed.
Must—not
,’’ she repeated slowly and emphatically, as if she were talking to the deaf Maria.

‘‘Yes, I’m sorry, but it’s past one o’clock, so I knew you’d be breaking off for lunch.’’

‘‘Today lunch will be at two,’’ Lady Newton said, without any further explanation. She looked Enzo up and down as he stood, in the middle of the hall, his head bowed and his hands clasped before him. ‘‘And who is that?’’

‘‘Oh, don’t be tiresome, N.,’’ Maisie Brandon said. Weary, hot and hungry, she had just asked at the Palazzo d’Oro for a room at the week-end. ‘‘You can’t have forgotten in these four hours. I told you that I had a servant for you.’’

‘‘Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?’’ Suddenly Lady Newton sniffed: ‘‘What’s that scent you’re wearing,’’ she demanded.

Maisie told her.

‘‘Well, I don’t like it,’’ Lady Newton replied as the dog thudded down from the sofa and tottered towards them, stopping at every yard to scratch at its ear with short, staccato yelps. ‘‘What is it, darling? What is it then?’’ Lady Newton picked up the animal and holding it like a baby kissed each of its paws in turn and then kissed its nose. Suddenly she looked up at the impatient Maisie: ‘‘I told you not to use the car in the mornings. You know I explained that I must have Giorgio for the kitchen while Maria is single-handed. It’s so thoughtless of you, Maisie, really it is. You can easily take the bus.’’

‘‘But I asked about the car, and you said——’’ Maisie began in a voice of controlled rage. But she was at once interrupted:

‘‘What were you doing in town anyway? The hairdresser? That’s the second time this week.’’

‘‘You know I’ve got to dine with the Consul——’’

Lady Newton threw back her head and guffawed so loudly that the dog squirmed and wriggled in her arms, rolling its puffy, red-rimmed eyes. ‘‘Who ever heard of spending money on a hair-dresser before taking pot-luck at that household? Don’t be ridiculous, my dear.’’ The story was that when the Consul’s wife had asked her to dinner Lady Newton had written back that she would be delighted to come provided that she was not expected to return the invitation. ‘‘Well, let’s see the boy.’’ She dropped the dog and strode across to Enzo, looking him up and down. He blushed, shifted like a startled animal, and eventually raised his eyes to give her an embarrassed smile. That morning he had put on clean clothes and his mother had given him the money to have a shave and hair-cut. ‘‘Looks as strong as a horse,’’ Lady Newton said with approval. ‘‘ He’ll have to be, with all there is to do.’’ In Italian she said to him: ‘‘From eight to eight. All meals. Six thousand lire a month. All right?’’

The boy nodded but Maisie cut in:

‘‘My dear N., six thousand lire—that’s a beggar’s wage! It’s less than three pounds a month.’’

‘‘Mind your own business,’’ Lady Newton said casually and then, after a moment’s deliberation, twisting her lower lip between her gardener’s-boy fingers, she added: ‘‘Let me tell you that there are thirty thousand unemployed in Florence alone. I’m going to feed the boy. I shan’t feed him well, but at least he won’t be hungry.’’

‘‘I don’t know how you have the face to offer anyone such a—such a——’’ But indignation came naturally to Maisie only when her own interests were involved. ‘‘Well, I’ll leave him to you,’’ she said. ‘‘I must go and get ready for lunch.’’

‘‘It’s not till two, don’t forget.’’

‘‘But I’m famished!’’ Maisie wailed, with far more distress than at the mention of Enzo’s wages. ‘‘ No, really—it’s going a bit far!’’

Lady Newton merely ignored this protest. ‘‘Come,’’ she said to Enzo, and going to the end of a corridor, lined with large brass pots, some empty, some containing umbrellas or the yellowed, trailing remains of plants, she again bawled: ‘‘Ma-ri-a!’’ But though she continued to shout the name down the echoing passage, on this occasion no shufflings, scrapings and rustlings announced the woman’s approach. ‘‘Damn! … Oh, well, you can start scrubbing this floor. It hasn’t been done for months. Come on.’’ And because Enzo, in his confusion, was slow to follow, she caught him by the arm and began to push him before her towards a door. ‘‘Open the door,’’ she commanded. ‘‘Bucket—cloth—soap. Don’t be so clumsy, put the soap in your other hand! Like this.’’ Suddenly she grabbed all the articles from him, only to give him back the bucket. ‘‘ Tap over there. No—use your eyes. Over there! Fill the bucket—good lad. Never mind if the water splashes on the floor, you have to scrub it later. All right? Now, down on your knees.… No, no, no!’’ she expostulated in irritation. ‘‘Give it to me, give the cloth to me.’’ She pulled up her shapeless tweed skirt and then knelt beside him. ‘‘ Like this.’’ Energetically she began to scrub the cracked and dusty tiles. ‘‘Put all you’ve got into it.’’ She panted, obviously doing this herself. ‘‘ There’s nothing like hard work.’’

In the end she left him and there was silence in the corridor except for the splash of water, the swish of the cloth, and the boy’s heavy breathing. Now that he was alone he worked with a violent efficiency, as if he were scrubbing out the traces of a crime, never once pausing, never once slackening, though the sweat poured down his face. He was working, and he had not worked for two and a half years; in that knowledge he experienced an exaltation of the spirit, he recovered his essential manhood. The blackened tiles were slowly polished to whiteness; the water in the bucket foamed with dross and scum. His knees were already sore, his arms and back ached. But he was hardly aware of these things; and it was with the sense of being roused from a long dream that he at last heard Lady Newton bark:

‘‘Boy! I say, boy!’’

‘‘Yes,
signora
.’’

‘‘Go and find that woman. Ask her what’s become of lunch, tell her it’s half-past one.’’

‘‘Which woman,
signora
?’’

‘‘There’s only one woman,’’ she retorted irritably. ‘‘Oh, not the Englishwoman. Maria, you fool.’’

‘‘But where can I find her?’’

‘‘Where? In the kitchen of course.’’

‘‘The kitchen?’’

‘‘Yes, the kitchen.’’

As Enzo walked stiffly down the corridor, peering into empty room after empty room, Lady Newton shouted after him: ‘‘Don’t dawdle. Get a move on. Tell her she’s over half an hour late.’’

Maisie, hearing the strident voice as she lay on her unmade bed and read a book in an effort to forget her hunger, muttered to herself, ‘‘The bitch is quite mad,’’ and then got to her feet with a sigh.

Perhaps, after all, lunch would be before two.

E
NZO
was fortunate and was paid his week’s wages; and when Colin asked him how he liked the work, he would nod his head vigorously and repeat, ‘‘
Va bene, va bene
.’’ But it was a strange household; and particularly strange now that Maisie Brandon had left to join her friends at the Palazzo d’Oro. Until her departure she had been, in an ineffective, sporadic way, the boy’s protector and guide, shielding him from the worst of Lady Newton’s eccentricities and giving him advice when he was baffled by her contradictory orders. ‘‘He’s a nice kid,’’ she used to drawl when she was asked about him, ‘‘and he has the patience of an angel.’’ While she was still at the villa, she used to like to sit in some room he was cleaning. Pretending to read, she would watch the muscles in his broad back and arms as he scrubbed and swept before her, and from time to time she would let fall some remark in her slovenly Italian or toss him a cigarette. Once she said casually, ‘‘ I want a puff of that,’’ and took the cigarette she had just given him from between his lips to put it to her own.

‘‘I’d like to visit the villa,’’ Colin repeatedly told her. ‘‘It sounds so extraordinary. Please mayn’t I?’’

‘‘Not an earthly, my dear. I’ve blotted my copy-book well and truly. She never wants me in the villa until I decide to go; then she does. I’d rather break out of Holloway any day than make that escape again. It was hell, sheer hell. Every door was slammed, but every door.’’

Nevertheless Colin decided that he would go to the villa. ‘‘No, no,’’ Enzo said, echoing Maisie’s words. ‘‘
È impossibile
.’’ He was genuinely alarmed. ‘‘ I shall lose my job. You must not come. She would not forgive me.’’

‘‘But when she’s out,’’ Colin pursued.

‘‘She never goes out.’’

‘‘She must go out sometime.’’

‘‘Never.’’

But this was not true. Lady Newton had for many years been a member of the Committee of a British relief organization, attending its meetings with unfailing zeal and regularity. It was not that she was interested in the work of the organization or even, as once, in the exercise of power for its own sake; but there were feuds of long standing between herself and most of the older members and whatever the cost in boredom she could not now bear to leave them the field. So whenever the Committee met, she was there, like a prizefighter who should long ago have quit the ring, to join issue with foes of twenty, twenty-five and even thirty years standing.

Colin had heard other members of the English colony talk of these meetings to Karen and Max, and having discovered when the next took place, decided that on that afternoon he would pay Enzo a visit.

At twelve, on the day he had chosen, the sky had begun to descend, and the hills had been united with it. On the terrace of the hotel, a sudden, convulsive shudder would pass through the flowering shrubs in their square green boxes, a few dead leaves would scrape on the stone-paved floor. Apparently without reason, a branch all at once snapped from its stem and hung, like a badly severed limb, from a ribbon of green skin. The brown surface of the Arno was pocked with an occasional cascade of raindrops and then congealed into its usual muddy tranquillity. A blind man was seated on the pavement opposite the hotel, his long, emaciated legs stuck so far out that the passers-by either had to climb over them or walk on the road. He was playing a harmonica, but in the heavy air the quavering notes seemed barely to have strength to rise from his lungs. He had turned up his coat collar in expectation of the storm, while those who might have given to him hurried regardless past.

‘‘At last it will rain,’’ Mrs. Bennett said with satisfaction, drawing a handkerchief across her face.

‘‘It was like this last Tuesday, and it didn’t,’’ Pamela warned. ‘‘But I hope it does. Then we can have electricity for the lift all through the day, and the taps may run faster.’’