Thus Was Adonis Murdered (14 page)

I have a rather curious, possibly even sinister, incident to relate to you. One might call it, perhaps, the Phenomenon of the Recurring Mayor. Before coming to it, however, I should mention, by way of prelude, an episode which occurred at breakfast time.

I don’t know if you have ever noticed, Selena, how after a few months of doing without the pleasures of the flesh and being more or less resigned to it—of thinking, that is to say, that it would be nice if they were available but that since they are not one had better get on with construing the Taxes Acts—how, after such a period, an interruption of the celibate life tends rather to stimulate than allay the appetite. It is, I have found, the same with strawberries: during the winter I am not subject to any overpowering desire for them; but when I eat my first strawberry of the season and am reminded by direct experience of their warm yet un-cloying sweetness and their yielding firmness between one’s teeth, then I can by no means content myself with one, or two, or even three, but go on eating them with immoderate greed until the bowl is empty or forcibly taken from me.

Thus, when I woke this morning, I began to reflect on the unlikelihood of any further success with Ned, and on the prettiness of the waiter who brings my breakfast. The travel agents did say, after all, that service was included.

The procedure for taking advantage of Italian waiters—equally applicable, so far as I am aware, in other areas of the Mediterranean—does not merit any long exposition. It consists chiefly of staying in bed until they bring one’s breakfast and then smiling benevolently. Waiters, generally speaking, seem not to mind being taken advantage of.

It is to be remembered, however, that they are an overworked and exploited profession, who have to spend much of their energies running to and fro carrying drinks and so on, so that the duration of the pleasure given is not always commensurate to the enthusiasm with which it is offered. If the coffee brought me by the pretty waiter had been cold by the time he left, I should have been willing, in the particular circumstances, to forgive him; but my forgiveness was not called for. Still, one must not be ungrateful—strawberries are strawberries.

I come now to the curious and possibly sinister incident.

For the reasons indicated above, it was rather later than usual—though not so much later as I could have wished—that I was ready to leave my room. On opening my door, however, I observed that the corridor contained the Major. Fortunately, he did not see me, being at that moment in the act of closing the door to his room. To avoid meeting him being at present one of my chief objects, I withdrew again to my room and lit a Gauloise. When I had smoked half of it, I thought it must be safe to leave.

The Major was still in the corridor and was still closing a door. Well, you will say, Selena, that there was nothing very startling about that—he had forgotten something, you will say, had gone back to his room for it and was now leaving for a second time. I do not think, however, that your hypothesis is tenable; for it seemed to me that the door he was closing on this occasion was not that of his own room—it was that of the adjoining room, which is occupied by Ned and Kenneth Dunfermline. Much perplexed, I withdrew again and smoked the rest of the Gauloise. Then, with the utmost caution, I looked out again into the corridor.

The Major was still in the corridor. He was still closing a door. This time, if my observation by now was at all to be relied on, the door of his own room.

Much shaken, I withdrew yet again and consumed in two gulps what remained of my duty-free brandy. The liquid which saw Napoleon across the Russian Steppes did not fail me—when next I opened my door, the corridor was empty. Without further untoward incident, I made my way to the terrace.

The incident I have described seemed to me extraordinarily disquieting. I could think of no sensible reason for the Major to spend some ten minutes rigidly posed in the attitude of one closing a door. The likely explanation, I felt, was that the suggestion of marrying him had had such traumatic effects on me as to induce a series of paranoid hallucinations: whenever I opened a door, I would imagine, unless previously fortified by brandy, that I saw the Major closing one. This, with brandy the price it is, would be an inconvenient affliction.

My intention in going on to the terrace had been to write to you immediately of this disturbing experience. I was diverted from my purpose, however, by the discovery there of the lovely Ned, leaning in a graceful attitude against the balcony which divides the terrace from the canal.

This was not altogether a piece of good fortune, for he was looking more beautiful than ever. The sunlight catching his pale hair, his white shirt a little open to show the smoothness of his neck, his translucent skin warmed by eight days in Venice—if he reminded one before of something by Praxiteles, one thought now that the artist had cast his work in gold. The effect was to inspire in me as ardent a passion as I had felt when I first saw him on the aeroplane. It seemed to me, after all the trouble I had been to, that Wednesday afternoon had done me no good at all. Well, I suppose that is not strictly true—it is always better to have had Wednesday afternoon than not to have had Wednesday afternoon; but I could find in myself none of that quiet contentment which one looks for as the consequence of an achieved desire.

“You appear,” I said, “at some risk of falling into the canal. Do at least avoid the danger of looking at your reflection in it. Remember Narcissus.”

At this he smiled and looked pleased; but I was prevented from further compliment by the arrival on the terrace of Marylou, free, for once, of matrimonial surveillance.

“I haven’t seen you two in days,” she said, sounding reproachful.

“The loss is ours,” I answered, “rather than the fault.”

“Anyway,” she went on, “I hope you’re both coming on the trip to Verona this afternoon. Stanford didn’t want to go, because he’s already been to Verona. But I told Stanford no way was I going to miss seeing Verona just because he’d been there at the weekend seeing a business acquaintance.” Her tone suggested no improvement in her opinion of such a person. “And I don’t figure we’ll be seeing the same things he saw over the weekend. He won’t have looked at anything historically relevant, not unless you count a ten-year-old bottle of rye. I mean, Stanford is not exactly aesthetically aware. He is a fine person in many ways—but when they dished up aesthetic awareness, I guess that Stanford just wasn’t holding his plate out. So I hope you’re both coming this afternoon?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” answered Ned. “Ken’s going. But Julia and I both went on Tuesday.”

She expressed her disappointment with flattering exaggeration, and asked if we had enjoyed Verona.

“Very much,” answered Ned. “Graziella wasn’t able to come with us, so Julia acted as guide.”

“Oh, I wish I’d been with you,” she said. “I think Julia’d be a just marvellous guide.”

“Oh yes,” he said, with great demureness, “she is. Excellent. She takes one to all the places one ought to go to. And sometimes,” he added, with even greater demureness, “to places one ought not to go to.” And thinking, no doubt, that this could not be improved on as an exit line, he excused himself from our company and left the terrace.

I was still not able to write to you immediately of the Phenomenon of the Recurring Major, for Marylou persuaded me to go with her on a shopping expedition. It seemed to me that on the Rialto she had already acquired in wholesale quantities every form of merchandise that Venice offers to the discerning tourist; but she assured me that this was not the case.

As a result of this diversion, it was not until midday that I was able to return here and write to you of my disquieting experience. Even now, I have not escaped interruption. My secluded corner of the terrace has been taken over for the purpose of an assignation. I am left exposed to enquiry from all the tourists who pass to and fro in the lobby of the Cytherea and for some reason look on me as a likely source of information: three large German matrons, wearing identical straw hats, have asked me the way to the ladies’; an earnest young Englishman has asked me to point out the house where Byron lived; a party of French schoolgirls have asked me which
vaporetto
will take them to the Lido. I have responded sympathetically, if not accurately, to all these enquiries. You will therefore forgive, I hope, the disjointedness of my narrative.

Before going to lunch, I shall have to return to my room to get the guide book to Verona—having confessed to Marylou that it was the foundation of my success there, I felt obliged by courtesy to offer it to her for this afternoon’s excursion. I have explained to her that it is Ragwort’s and she must be very careful of it.

On leaving my room again, I shall be circumspect but not fearful. Writing to you has persuaded me to look on the bright side: I now realize that to see the Major when he isn’t really there must at least be preferable to seeing him when he is really there. If, however, there is any repetition of the Phenomenon, I shall report it forthwith by way of postscript.

Men, Selena, are very odd creatures—I shall never understand them. There seems to be in their conduct no reason or consistency of purpose—they are blown like feathers this way and that on every changing breeze of mood and fancy, so that it is quite impossible to predict, on any rational basis, what they will do next. Delightful, of course, in some ways, but confusing. Take, merely as an example, the enchanting Ned, with whom I should have said this morning that there was not the slightest chance—well, I will tell you everything, just as it happened.

Having returned to my room to fetch the guide book to Verona, I left it again without misadventure—that is to say, without seeing the Major in fact or fantasy: I concluded with relief that the affliction had been temporary. Coming downstairs again, I found myself crossing the bridge back to the main part of the hotel only a few paces behind Ned and Kenneth. As seemed natural in the circumstances, I said “hello” to them, patting Ned on the elbow—a gesture, I think, of no greater intimacy than one Art Lover might in good fellowship show towards another.

Ned’s reaction to this was most extraordinary. He turned round towards me very sharply and violently, almost as if preparing to defend himself against some physical attack, and said, in a tone of disproportionate ill-temper, “For God’s sake, Julia, don’t do that.” This seemed an absurdly exaggerated response: he could hardly suppose that I would choose such a time and place for an improper advance; besides, his reaction was more appropriate to an attack on his life than on his virtue.

I apologized for having startled him.

“Don’t take any notice,” said Kenneth, evidently embarrassed by Ned’s abruptness. “He’s just started worrying about tomorrow’s flight. He gets very nervous about flying, don’t you, Ned?”

“Yes,” said his friend. “Yes, horribly, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, Julia—I didn’t mean to snap at you.” Looking at him more closely, I was inclined to believe that this was indeed the reason for his curious behaviour, rather than anything specifically to do with me. He was very pale and showed every sign of nervousness. I noticed with great distress that the perfection of his chin was marred by a strip of adhesive plaster.

“Ned,” I cried, unable to conceal my anguish at this aesthetic catastrophe, “what have you done to your face?”

“My hand was shaking so much I cut myself shaving,” he said. “Isn’t it silly? Do I look very awful?”

“No, no,” I said, “no, of course not.”

I filled the time it took us to reach the dining-room with reassurance and compliment; but Ned’s nervousness seemed unabated—I noticed that he ate no lunch and even spilt some of his wine. Still, though concluding that there had been nothing personal in his response to my greeting on the bridge, I would not have given a lira for my chances of further success with him.

Graziella arrived, as we were finishing lunch, to round up in time for a two o’clock departure those Art Lovers who were going to Verona—that is to say, Kenneth and the two Americans. Kenneth hesitated, and seemed to be asking Ned if he minded being left alone; but eventually, patting him on the shoulder and suggesting that he should lie down for a while, he followed Graziella out of the dining-room. Ned and I were the only Art Lovers remaining—Eleanor and the Major had been absent from lunch. Coming over to my table, Ned suggested that we should have coffee together on the terrace.

“Well,” I said, as we drank our coffee, “this is our last afternoon in Venice—how are you proposing to spend it?”

“I’m still not feeling terribly well,” he answered. “I think I’d better do as Kenneth says—take a siesta.”

“What a pity,” I said, “that you won’t allow me to share it.” I entertained, as I have said, no hope of getting anywhere with this suggestion—I made it rather as a matter of form, not wishing Ned to think that the strip of adhesive plaster so detracted from his appearance that I could easily refrain from making an advance.

And for all the world as if he knew no better than a young man brought up to serve breakfasts rather than tax assessments, as if no wounding remarks had been made about obligations which he was happy to forget, as if my approach on the bridge had been a matter for satisfaction rather than alarm—“Why not?” he answered.

Men, Selena, are very odd.

We returned across the bridge to the annexe, smiled on again by the pretty chambermaids, and went, this time, to Ned’s room rather than mine.

If he felt any modest reluctance to yield again so soon and with so little intervening commentary on his soul and intellect, it was, I am bound to say, most admirably dissimulated, for he devoted himself to the enterprise with great energy and apparent enthusiasm. To such an extent, indeed, that if I were the woman to call a truce with the Revenue—but never let it be said. Such exertion, in the heat of a Venetian afternoon, ends unhealthfully in sleeping between damp sheets. Ah Selena, when in our age I complain of my rheumatics, remind me how pleasantly I earned them.

When I woke up it was past six o’clock. Ned, lying beside me, still looked so peacefully asleep that tender-heartedness prevented me from waking him. Not wanting him to think, however, that I valued him so little as to leave entirely without ceremony, I scribbled my name and address and a few discreet words of affection on the inside cover of my Finance Act and left it, by way of souvenir, on the table beside the bed.

After this, having washed and changed for dinner, I came down to the terrace to write to you of the oddness of men. I am back in my usual corner: the vine or similar shrub has thus protected me from any obligation to converse with Eleanor or the Major, both of whom have returned to the annexe in the past half-hour—they have been having a last rummage, I suppose, among the personal effects of the late Miss Tiverton.

I shall have to stop soon for lack of light: the sun has just set and the only lamp on the terrace is designed more for romantic atmosphere than serious illumination.

Besides, it seems to be time for dinner: the pretty chambermaids have scattered—no doubt to turn down counterpanes and so forth—and those of the Art Lovers who went to Verona have returned and are on their way back to the annexe. I shall go to dinner and post this on the way—I am feeling, for some reason, extraordinarily hungry.

Yours, Selena, as always, Julia.