Bedouin of the London Evening (14 page)

When the lights go out, the lilac girl will go on drying herself in the warm darkness; she'll be able to see perfectly well. And she'll scoff at her dog because it whimpers and is craven.

Then Sunglasses will bring a lighted lamp through the night to this indoor bathing scene, and the girl will already be dressed in her lilac robe. Her body will already smell of Calèche, that heavy Parisian powder which is for much older women, because it dresses the skin with the milky dust of another skin as heavy as soil, and
makes it plump. As for her hair, she'll have pushed it up in tresses on top of her head; she can't be bothered to do it. The atmosphere of the lamplight allows one to be slack. But for the shuddering behaviour of her dog, she would be ideally contented in these conditions. Accustomed to making a slow toilet, in any circumstances whatsoever, she's at home on the earth. With Arab-style gestures that concentrate the whole mind, she brings the cosmetics she wants within her circle of movement. Her arms bend and stretch themselves forth; it's impossible to look away from her.

And when the knocking on the door comes, in the middle of the storm – a man like that will always arrive in the teeth of fire and water – it will be Sunglasses who has been listening for it, who raises her eyebrows dreadfully, and leers: ‘The Devil is here!' It will be the lilac girl who ignores it, and goes on brushing with her hairbrush the warm flesh of her dog's silky ear. And keeps her eyes turned away.

Sunglasses will go upstairs because they are stronger than she is; the force of it is too much for her.

Only when she's closed the door of her room, only then will the lilac girl stir herself. On her way to the front door, she'll stoop and pat her spaniel on the head.

THEY SAY
that the helicopter station is the ugliest spot on the island. It consists of a square of concrete which juts into the sea and has a blockhouse on one corner.

Signora Danielli is waiting for her husband who has gone to Naples for the day. She's under a poor-looking tree, just a scraggy thing frizzed up by the hot concrete. There are cars parked along the roadside, and in one of them, lo and behold, the lilac girl alone with her dog.

The helicopter flies in badly, like a hornet. It luffs and is unsteady. A boiling wind, full of grit, buffets the Signora. Her skirt whips itself against her legs, her hair tugs away from her head, and she holds to the tree for support.

The machine comes to rest, screaming, tipped about on three
soft legs. While the blades of the propeller go on thudding round horizontally, steps are wheeled up to a door which opens underneath it, and people start to get out with hasty movements like marionettes.

She can see her husband bending down inside at a window, and waves to encourage him. The lilac girl is out of the car and waving also. Signora Danielli looks for the burnished man. In conventional clothes, he must definitely be a god…but no sign of him.

Then it must be Sunglasses she's meeting. But no, she's not there either.

Then it is some entirely unknown person.

A middle-aged man carrying a despatch case and an umbrella hurries forward and embraces the lilac girl. He is bald, with glasses, and quite short; a strong pale nose sticks out. He's rich, obviously; everything about him appears to be new. Only he himself is a little worn, with lines and thoughts, against the worsted cloth, the crocodile and gold that show here and there. He holds her to him, deep feeling binds them; he loves her, and is besotted with her.

As for the lilac girl, it's a metamorphosis. Those animal gestures of the worldly-wise concubine which Signora Danielli thought belonged to her, those atrocious manners and hidden eyes – they're gone in a puff of smoke.

A happy schoolgirl looks straight into the eyes of her only friend and laughs out loud with joy. The lilac girl rubs her head against his coat, and can't stop talking for one minute.

He gets into the driving seat of the car and pulls gently at the ear of the dog, which tries to climb into his lap.

With the animated lilac girl beside him, he starts the engine. How happy they are; he drives, and laughs, without taking his eyes off the traffic.

‘Vitti,
cara
. It's been a good day, I can see that. No, you don't look tired, not at all. Here? Well, nothing very much. I had to get Filippo to tie up the creeper, it was broken by the storm. And we buried the rat, so you won't trip over it again.'

She knows from his expression that it has not been a good day.
There is the first sad glance from the
via dolorosa
of his thoughts. Oh, how disappointed he always is. And she tries to give him everything, to renew everything for him, so that life will be good enough for him. But he turns away, ill with nerves; he can't bear it when she beseeches him to be happy, against his will. And is so happy herself, for no particular reason.

They walk to their car, side by side, in silence.

She gets a sight, in the distance, of the other car just disappearing. The car she might have been in forty years ago. if she'd married her friend. But instead she married her lover. And that road led her only to herself.

‘All because of a certain feeling he gave me, once or twice, which made me cry out, ‘
Now I shall not have lived in vain!
' Because I expected that feeling from life, and tried to take it for myself, it promptly vanished. And now I can't even remember what it was like. And don't even care.'

This short story was originally published in
Encounter
, XL no.1 (January 1973). The epigraph is the third stanza of ‘The Ice-cream Boom Towns' (p.90). Rosemary Tonks wrote much of her fiction in a villa on the island of Ischia near Naples where she spent several summer weeks every year from 1967 to 1975.