Dorothy Eden (3 page)

“Something like that,” Kate said cheerfully. “Just my cup of tea, don’t you agree?”

The early night was not possible, for, as predicted by Mrs. Peebles, William did come around. He was a tall young man and heavily built. Kate’s one armchair sagged perilously beneath his weight, and although she had a reasonable amount of floor space, his comfortably sprawled legs formed a constant hurdle as she tried to do her packing and cope with his barrage of questions.

“It’s fishy,” he said.

“Don’t be absurd. What’s fishy about bringing a seven-year-old child to England?”

“Why don’t they let you fly?”

“I’ve told you. Because Francesca loves trains and wants to go up the Eiffel Tower. It’s a special treat.”

“She sounds like a spoilt brat.”

“She probably is, but for twenty guineas pin-money I’d travel third-class to Greece and back. And they’re giving me time in Rome to rest. I’ll be dashing madly about, of course. I want to get a good face for my new illustration.”

“For the hero? An Italian?” William said sceptically. William edited a small, highly literary, topical magazine himself, and was often irritatingly facetious about Kate’s endeavours in the romantic field.

“No, for the villain. Someone madly wicked and irresistible. I’ll probably fall in love with him.”

“Don’t do that,” said William mildly, tapping out his pipe and scattering ash indiscriminately.

“Why not?”

“You wouldn’t be happy.”

“I suppose you think I’m more likely to be happy with someone like you, cluttering up my flat, criticizing me, wearing foul ties, needing a haircut—my God, you do need a haircut!”

“I’ll go out and get some beer,” said William.

“You won’t come back here with it. Honestly, I haven’t time. Please go so that I can concentrate on what I’m doing.”

“All right. I can see when I’m not wanted. Want me to come to Victoria in the morning?”

“For heaven’s sake, no!”

“Then I’ll meet you when you come back. Send me a postcard or something.”

“I’ll have the child then, and goodness knows what.”

“If the ‘what’ is an Italian count, I can always punch him in the jaw.”

“Don’t be absurd! Only three days and travelling all the time. And with my face—”

“Even with your face. Snub nose, crooked mouth. You’re an ugly, adorable little devil.”

He didn’t take her in his arms in a civilized way, he swooped over her like a great tree whose branches suddenly engulfed her. Tweedy, redolent of stale pipe smoke, strong…

Kate struggled impatiently and ineffectually, then submitted. Really, it was too boring. Why did William have to be so masterly?

F
RANCESCA. THE NAME CONJURED
up the picture of some dark, thin, flashing-eyed temperamental child, full of charm and animation.

Kate was frankly taken aback when she met the real Francesca. Just as she had been taken aback at the sight of the street and the house where she had been instructed to pick up the child.

Her mind flashed back to Francesca’s mother, lying languidly on a couch in a luxurious room, and to the excellent arrangements made for her own trip to Rome, the good hotel at which she had spent the night, and the ample money she had been allowed.

Francesca, obviously, was a valued and much-desired child, and her parents not lacking in means. Why, therefore, was she living in such a squalid house? Even temporarily.

And why was she in the charge of such a dirty, down-at-the-heel woman as the one who came to the door in response to Kate’s knock?

It was late autumn, but still hot in Rome. Kate had undone her travelling coat, and her hair was ruffled from her nervous gesture of pushing it back when she was agitated. She thought the taxi-driver had brought her to the wrong street. She looked at the row of shabby, paint-peeling houses in astonishment, and hesitated to get out and knock on the door of Number 16.

When the woman, whose quick smile seemed to hide uneasiness, opened the door, she was even more sure she had made a mistake. Yesterday, exhausted by her long journey, and yet determined to make the most of this brief visit to one of her favourite cities, she had rushed from the Colosseum to Hadrian’s Arch, and then to the Borghese Gardens, and late in the evening had done a tour of the fountains. Tiredness and excitement had given her a queer feeling of being transported to the past, to the days of hungry lions turned on living human flesh, the crack of the slave-driver’s whip, and the cries of a rabble demanding a victim. This morning, when her journey to get Francesca had taken her so near to the Appian Way, the mood had persisted, and she was temporarily haunted by a heavy sense of decay beneath the splendour, and of death.

But the woman in the shabby little house, strangely enough, was expecting her. Apparently she had come to the right place.

She called in a shrill high voice, “Frances-s-ca!” and took Kate inside, although she said in halting English that the child was ready, and had been for the last hour.

The dark little room in which Kate stood smelt strongly of garlic. She wondered hazily, with yesterday’s tiredness still hanging over her, whether this woman was now married to Francesca’s father—but surely the elegant and expensive Rosita had never come from surroundings like this.

The woman was explaining something in a gabble of Italian when the little girl came slowly in.

Kate had another surprise, for this stout, heavy child with the heavy-lidded sullen eyes, was utterly unlike the Francesca she had imagined. It seemed, however, that within the fat little chest of the sulky and silent child there must dwell the phantom of Kate’s imagined Francesca, for she had chosen to wear, of all things, a white organdie dress, elaborately starched and ironed, and in her straight dark hair was a huge stiff bow.

She was a little girl going to a party where, despite all her parents’ attempts to make her decorative and appealing, she would remain clumsy, silent and hurt.

She was pathetic.

Kate realized it at once, and went quickly towards her.

“Francesca! Hullo!” Her voice was warm and gay. “My name is Kate, and I’m taking you to your mother. But first, of course, we have the train journey, and a visit to the Eiffel Tower, and lots of good things to eat.”

The child surveyed her stolidly and mutely. The woman shook her head. “She does not understand. She speaks very little English. And you, signorina?”

“No Italian,” said Kate, laughing. “Never mind, we’ll get along. Is she ready? Does she have to say goodbye to anyone?”

“No, no. That is all done. Her papa yesterday when he brought her here. I was her nurse, you understand? He did not wish the last farewells.”

She made the motion of wiping her eyes, and Kate had a moment of sympathy for the absent emotional father who perhaps was the more deserving parent. For it was a little difficult to imagine this child fitting into the London drawing-room of her attractive mother.

She felt uneasy and a little sad, and had to remind herself that none of this was her business before she could take the child’s soft broad hand and say, “Then we’re all ready, Francesca. Your bags?”

“Just this small one,” said the woman, handing Kate a rather battered and cheap-looking suitcase. Then she swooped over the child to give her a hug. The child stiffened, and backed away. The woman hugged her, nevertheless, then had to straighten the preposterous blue bow and the unsuitable dress.

She shrugged her shoulders. “She would wear that dress, signorina. I know it is foolish, but when Francesca insists…” She shrugged her shoulders again.

Looking at the stubborn, unmoved face, Kate could very well understand what she meant. There might, she feared, be more than one silent battle before the two of them reached London. This probably explained the generous fee she was to receive. Well, never mind, she would earn it…

“The taxi’s waiting,” she said. “We’d better go. Thank you, signora…”

The child walked quite placidly beside her. She hadn’t spoken a word.

They were stepping out into the brilliant sunlight when suddenly the woman gave a shrill cry and called to them to wait. She darted away, saying something that sounded like “bambino,” but when she appeared a moment later she had only a quite small doll in her hands. It was not a particularly attractive one. Its blonde hair had become stringy, and its silk dress was slightly grubby. It didn’t even look as if it had been an expensive doll, the kind one would have imagined parents like Francesca’s would have lavished on her. But apparently it was her much cherished one, for Kate remembered now that Rosita had said she would never go to bed without her doll.

Nevertheless, such was her stolidity, that when the woman thrust it into her arms, she held it almost indifferently, and indeed for two pins would have dropped it on the doorstep. However, she was still holding it as she climbed into the taxi, and it was there, too, that she found her tongue, and called in almost as penetrating a voice as the woman’s, “
Arrivederci,
Gianetta.”

In the train the two of them faced each other warily across the narrow space of their first-class compartment.

“Is this your first trip to England, Francesca?”

Since her sudden boisterous goodbye, Francesca had remained stubbornly silent in the taxi, behaving, when Kate spoke to her, as if she were stone deaf.

But now she suddenly broke her silence and said flatly, “No spik
Inglese
.”

Oh, dear! thought Kate. Was that true? Or were those heavy-lidded eyes that made the child look like a junior Mona Lisa hiding secrets? Surely, with Gianetta, her nurse, speaking English fairly fluently, and her mother speaking it very well indeed, she would have learnt at least a few words. Kate decided this was more than probable, and before the journey was over she would have caught her out. In the meantime, she would chat pleasantly, whenever necessary, and pretend that it was of no importance whether or not she were answered.

“We’ll be having lunch shortly. Do you like eating on a train? I still think it’s one of the most exciting things to do. Next to sleeping on one, of course. When you wake up tomorrow morning you’ll be practically in Paris, practically at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.”

Francesca’s eyes suddenly flew wide open and a gleam of excitement showed momentarily in them. This was no proof that she had understood anything except the last two words, but it did show that she set great store on her visit to the Eiffel Tower. She began to spread her dress carefully about her so that it would remain fresh and uncrushed for so important an occasion. No doubt it was for that purpose that she had insisted to the disapproving Gianetta that she would wear her party dress.

Going up the Eiffel Tower represented a party to her. Probably it was the only real thing that emerged out of the confusion of her separated parents and her loss of security. Encouraged by this success, Kate persevered with the conversation.

“What’s your doll’s name?”

The Mona Lisa look came back. Kate picked up the doll lying rather forlornly on the seat, and pointed to it.

“Who?”

“Pepita,” said Francesca sulkily, then suddenly snatched the doll from Kate and clasped it possessively.

“That’s a Spanish name.”

“
Si
.”

It didn’t seem to matter. The doll, with its ragged blonde locks, was obviously the only other object of Francesca’s affections. The Eiffel Tower and a shabby doll, and a white organdie party dress and a festive blue bow in her hair. All at once, strangely, Kate wanted to cry.

The train rocketed on through the dry autumn countryside towards Milan. Kate tried out her few Italian words on the waiters in the restaurant car. Her charge remained silent except when at one stage she made a long excited speech to one of the waiters.

The man grinned. Kate asked, “What was all that?”

“She says she like ravioli, signorina.”

“And there’s no ravioli?”

“Only spaghetti, signorina.”

The waiter shook his head regretfully, and Francesca stolidly but expertly wound enormous quantities of spaghetti into her mouth. She was a philosophical child. She made the best of what she could get. No doubt her short life had already taught her that necessary lesson.

No one came to share their compartment. Towns, in an afternoon haze of tawny roofs and old, sun-faded walls, went by. There was more arid countryside and shabby villages, with splashes of paint, orange and violent blue. Francesca had dozed after lunch, her doll clasped firmly on her spaghetti-filled stomach. Now she was wide awake.

“We change trains here to cross the frontier,” Kate explained at Milan. “Then we change again at Basle, and there you’ll have a bed for the rest of the night.”

She didn’t know whether the child understood, but she came docilely to climb off the train and follow Kate through the jostling, excited, noisy mob that was Milan railway station. She was a plump incongruous little figure in her now crushed white organdie and nodding blue bow. At least, Kate thought, those foolish clothes made her too conspicuous to get lost.

But with her lumbering docility, that was like that of an elderly and faithful dog, it did not seem probable that such an emergency would arise.

The man with his hat still pulled too low over his eyes changed trains at Milan, also. While Kate fussed about finding their compartment and getting Francesca safely on board he, however, had time to make a telephone call.

Although, since it was a trunk call, it seemed at the last minute that it wouldn’t come through in time, and he was tensing and untensing his long, nervous fingers in impatience and anxiety when at last the clerk called to him.

“Your Swiss call, signor.”

Then it took some time to make himself understood. After all, it wasn’t an ordinary call inviting himself to stay overnight because he happened to be passing through Basle. It was something very different.

But at last he thought all was well.

He paid for the call and walked away slowly, reflecting on the split-second timing required, the crazy improbability of the whole thing.

Then a thought came into his head and his eyes narrowed and grew grim. This had to succeed.