The Honeyed Peace (19 page)

When the German Army entered Paris there was stillness and sorrow in the cafés along the Havana water-front. No one had ever been to Paris, but you could imagine it to be a larger, grander Havana, and the people there seemed lost now and hurt beyond healing. One could not feel that the French, any more than the Cubans, would be people to start a war.

There was a little group, drinking in the Bar Nueva York: three Jai-Alai players and a fisherman and two waiters off duty from a café up the street. They were drinking sadly and from time to time one of them would say, 'It is not possible,' or 'What a barbarity!'

This was the day after the German Army paraded down the Champs Élysées.

The German, seeing these men from the street, came in noisily, as was his habit. The Basque Jai-Alai players turned their backs to him. He circled the table so he could see their faces. They were nothing but exiles from a war they had lost, and they gave themselves an air of pride as if they were the true conquerors. Also they spoke freely and on all occasions against the Nazis, which would not be forgotten when the time came.

'Hola, Jaime!' said the German.

The youngest, tallest, handsomest of the Basques, the best of them and the finest
delantero
now playing anywhere, looked at the German and did not speak.

'I'll buy you a drink, Jaime,' the German said. 'We will drink to our victory.'

'
Tu madre
,' Jaime said quietly. The German had lived long enough in Havana to feel the weight of the heaviest Spanish insult, but foreign insults are never entirely serious and he wished to enjoy himself.

'Oh, come, man, do not talk in this childish way,' the German said. 'When we have won the war, you will be very happy to play pelota in Berlin. There will be a lot of money in it. You will see how glad you are.'

Jaime walked around the table and hit the German across the mouth with the back of his open hand, in the way that one touches something too indecent to be honoured by a clean blow.

The German spoke quickly in his own language, and left the bar. Then the waiter brought fresh drinks and no one mentioned the German or what had happened.

Three nights later, Jaime, going home gay and a little drunk from the Palmas night club, was waylaid by four men who wore handkerchiefs over their faces. His right arm was broken in two places, which meant he would play no more that season and maybe never. Jaime could not identify the four men and the German had a sound alibi for the evening and night; there was nothing to do about it, in law. The Basques could not bring themselves to the idea of murdering a man, in an unlit alley, many against one, so that plan was discarded though only murder was suitable in return for Jaime's arm and his youth and his talent. They would, instead, find the German one night and smash him up too. For the moment he was being careful, but there was plenty of time. The hopeless thing was that no one could see where this would end.

Meanwhile the cruise ships came in, the Mayor got re-elected as arranged, someone started a shark-oil factory, in the pouring sunlight the streets were full of comfortable people, the price of sugar was going up.

VENUS ASCENDANT

Enid Langdon was relieved but shamed to see that her cousin Moira was getting on so well with that Italian lawyer. Hugh had insisted in his unobtrusive way that Signor Chiaretti be asked; it was a scrappy party anyhow, with bits and pieces of obligations gathered together, no one Enid minded about at all. The man on her left said something and Enid automatically produced her shrill upper-class giggle; the Italian wondered what he could have said, he had thought his English was reliable. Enid smiled down the table at her husband. Hugh very slightly nodded. By being his usual correct, neutral self he had made the Countess at his right and the poetess at his left feel that it was the dreg end of the night and they were hideous and old and catching a chill. Signor Chiaretti appeared to be really interested in Moira; incredible the way Italian men bowed all over one, edging nearer and nearer, flashing their eyes like stop and go signals. Moira should get married, Enid thought impatiently. How that girl wasted chances. The whole war. No one could marry an Italian, yet Rome was such a heavenly place to live.

'Yes, we've been here eight months,' Enid said to the deputy at her right; what had Hugh told her? A deputy favourable to England? 'We adore it. I wish we could stay forever.'

Rome, she thought, was at present the best post in the world, if not specially useful to Hugh's career; careers were not as important as she had once believed. So gay, such food, servants, clothes, parties, splendid for the children's education. The beauty of tidying up your debts at lunch was that no one could stay very long. There was only coffee to get through now, and fill-in chat until the proper moment to leave.

She came back from the last cordial farewell at the door, always an awkward moment with Italian men bowing to kiss her hand and Enid forgetfully pumping theirs.

'That's done,' she said. 'All right, Hugh?'

'Perfect.'

Moira, who had genuine English pink cheeks, now looked a bit on the beet-red side. Enid smiled understandingly and felt irritated.

'How was Signor Chiaretti?'

'I promised to go sight-seeing with him tomorrow.'

Moira knew that Signor Chiaretti was common even for an Italian, but he was the first person who had asked her to do anything on her own, not as an afterthought tacked to an invitation for Enid and Hugh. Moira had been here four months now. She could not quite justify this semi-permanent visit on the grounds that Enid, in her childhood, often stayed with Moira's family at Long Crendon whole summers at a time. Instead Moira felt she was being useful to Enid, with the children, the shopping, the servants, all those little ways another woman could help. Moira could not bear to return to England, but Enid, who had not lived in England since the beginning of the war, would have thought that shirking. Moira's wistful poverty was her real hold; you had to give shelter to the new-poor if they were cousins. Enid, annoyed by Moira's rosy face (she hated to think it, but Moira was becoming prideless in every way, fancy being so pleased by Signor Chiaretti's slimy, goggling attentions), said, 'Would you take the girls for a walk, darling? I've so much to do.'

'Oh, of course, I'd love to.' Moira, for the moment, had forgotten this household convention. She took the girls for a regular afternoon walk, as a governess would have done, but the trick was to make it seem each day a delightful innovation, a favour asked and joyfully granted.

Moira never thought much about the girls, Jill and Miranda, aged twelve and eight; it was not necessary to think. They were docile children who turned their polished brown shoes in whatever direction she indicated and answered, when spoken to, in acceptable clichés. Moira always said they were angels and she adored them and Enid was the most marvellous mother, and as far as she knew she believed this. She also said she was absolutely devoted to children and believed that too. Today as they walked along the Tiber under the sagging grey sky, Moira did not bother to talk to the children; she was thinking of Signor Chiaretti.

He was a man who could make you feel seductive just by asking if you'd seen the Colosseum; he was extraordinarily animal, Moira thought. She had anyhow a thing about foreigners; those years in London during the war, driving for the Americans, had been bliss. Her two affairs were with foreigners, an American major and a Polish captain. Englishmen were much more like brothers. Moira wondered what she would wear tomorrow. She had come out in the summer with one bag, containing all her light clothes, and now it was autumn. Enid had given her a brown jersey dress of no particular charm or style; but Signor Chiaretti had already seen it. She would have to wear her travelling coat and skirt. Twenty-five pounds did not go very far, were in fact all gone. Her mother twice sneaked five pounds into Enid's London account and Enid gave Moira the lire, which was not of course legal but that did not matter. The five pounds paid for cigarettes and bus fares and entrance tickets into museums. I must get a job, Moira thought in a harassed sighing way. She was always thinking that; meantime tomorrow there was Signor Chiaretti.

Moira had told Signor Chiaretti she would meet him at the Spanish Steps at four. The Langdons' flat was a whole high-ceilinged, dark, chilly-to-freezing floor in an ancient and romantic palazzo. The furnishings were odd, being a mixture of chipped gilt and pocked velvet left by the owners, and Enid's and Hugh's well-polished walnut and irreproachable chintzes. Enid spoke of it as 'charming, livable', despite the sharp breezes that pierced under doors and through closed windows. Moira thought it was a divine house. But it was definitely not hers and she wanted to be private and herself today, nobody's cousin; besides, the Spanish Steps were becoming to anyone. She stood near the centre flower-booth and for a moment, looking up at the sun-rimmed towers of Trinità dei Monti, she forgot her travelling suit; utility, eight pounds off the rack, fuzzy yet scratchy grey flannel evidently woven of wood pulp. Her legs were good, her hair was only slightly assisted to this declarative blondness; the suit could not spoil either of her best points. Anyhow, Signor Chiaretti was not apt to know about such things; his own clothes were of the striped sort.

Signor Chiaretti saw Moira at once and wondered why he had made this engagement. Signor Chiaretti attended brilliantly to his work, forwarded his ambitions, made money, met the right people, kept himself informed on a remarkable range of matters, and cared for nothing except the pursuit and domination of women. He also enjoyed their company if they were pleasing to look at and listened agreeably, but to enjoy their company was a luxury he did not demand. He studied the badly dressed woman who was waiting so hard, and remembered then why he had suggested this outing. Partly he liked to use his English; he was proud of it. He accepted invitations from the English for that reason, not that he cared for English people except in their books, which he read as if he were learning the fantastic customs of lost desert tribes. The English notoriously could master no language but their own; it delighted him to be told, as he always was, that he spoke English beautifully. Still, that would not have been sufficient cause to arrange this afternoon meeting. There were plenty of English in Rome; he could dine with them often enough. But he had not, and it was pure accident, made love to an Englishwoman; he was curious; he wanted to see if they were as different from other women as their cool hearty manner and improbable clothes implied. He decided he would find out today or not at all. This girl's lower jaw was slightly underslung; it was enough to discourage curiosity from the start.

He kissed Moira's hand, although her unmarried status did not warrant this, and was gratified that she blushed. But what had she been doing with her hands? They were as red as a washerwoman's. For an instant, Signor Chiaretti was troubled lest he had made a mistake; perhaps she was not the cousin of the English First Secretary as he had understood, but the children's governess? He was not interested in women who must be considered reasonable since they could earn their livings. He liked women to be spoiled, capricious, vain, unpredictable, in the same way that a hunter would not shoot tame birds. Moira's voice reassured him; no one except the well-born English spoke in this particular absurd way.

'It is a fine day,' Signor Chiaretti announced, 'let us go to Ostia Antica.' There would be a certain amount of steps, broken pillars, and other stone oddments to sit on, the ruins were apt to be quiet and deserted, the drive in the car was more suited to his purposes than trudging round churches.

'How lovely,' Moira said; 'I've never been there.'

In the car Moira kept an unnecessary distance, which amused him; he began to be quite pleased with her. She exclaimed nicely whenever they passed a large chunk of old brick, a piece of aqueduct, a crumbling tomb. Half-way to Ostia, Signor Chiaretti knew nothing about Moira except that she found Americans charming, so lively, so simple, so boyish. It began to rain, in the manner of this month, without warning and heavily. Signor Chiaretti said that the essential, when inspecting beauty, was to be comfortable; no one could be comfortable if damp. They must return to Rome.

'Right,' Moira said, like a good sport. So soon, before they'd really gone anywhere, the afternoon was over. Going back to Enid's now seemed to her a drab failure; nothing in her life ever got properly started.

'Let us go to my house for tea,' Signor Chiaretti suggested. 'Every public place in Rome is a disaster before the heat goes on. At my house, we can have a fire.'

'That sounds lovely,' Moira said and Signor Chiaretti recoiled from her unchanging enthusiasm.

He would have to satisfy his curiosity fast; she was neither as young as he had thought yesterday (unwilling to admit it, he knew he had been overpowered by the Langdons, he could not help feeling impressed by the bland certainty of the English, it made him awkward, assertive, and uncritical) nor was she pretty. He did not appreciate this straightforward pinkness.

Moira could not think what to say about Signor Chiaretti's apartment; she decided to say that it was interesting. Signor Chiaretti's wife, who was rich, changed the decoration every two years. The Parioli apartment building was a travertine nightmare, with equal large glass windows, equal flowered balconies, and trimmings of marble, chromium, and glassbrick. The Chiarettis' second floor was also modern. Last year it had been full of thick white fringe and dark blue satin upholstery and mirrors framed in meringue-like plaster. This year the furniture was pale and had physiological shapes, like kidneys, lungs, a table like a pancreas. The walls and the curtains were colours of earth, if the soil was poor and drought long advanced; mustards and withered greens, starved brownish reds. Left to herself Moira would not have known where to sit; no part of the salon seemed planned for two people at once. When Signora Chiaretti was at home, rigid flower arrangements graced the rooms. Since she was, as usual, spending this month at Montecatini for the cure (she took it carefully and preferred the spa out of season), the salon was bare of the cactus and tiger-lily combination she now favoured.