Some Bitter Taste (25 page)

The boy let out a breath more audible than his answers had been.

‘Thank you very much, both of you,’ the captain said. ‘Now we can leave the marshal to check over the room so he can write the required report, unless you …’ He raised his eyebrows at the prosecutor.

‘No, no, everything seems clear to me. Let’s get out of the marshal’s way and let him get on with preparing the report. Bureaucracy, the bane of our lives.’ They moved towards the door, Giorgio in the rear. As they reached it, the boy felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder.

‘Giorgio? Can I call you Giorgio?’

‘Yes …’

‘You’ll forgive me but I can’t remember your surname—or the proper way of pronouncing your real first name, if it comes to that—let them go, let them go. You’re not in a particular hurry, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Stay and give me a hand here. Show me that bell you were telling us about.’

The boy’s eyes went straight to the bedside table. An inlaid box, a bedside light, a full water carafe with a glass upside down over the stopper.

‘Yes … that’s where I thought it would have been but it’s not. I wonder where it’s got to. D’you think it got moved in the confusion?’

‘Yes. Yes, it must have … Excuse me, I—I need to go to the bathroom.’

The marshal lifted his hand but as the boy went towards the small concealed door it was easy to see that he could still feel the weight of it on his shoulder.

‘Just a minute—sorry, but if you could just tell me one small thing—what papers was Sir Christopher looking through that last evening? I mean, I know what it means to lose the use of your right hand, my mother was the same. Couldn’t manage the newspaper, couldn’t gather papers together. You need two hands for that sort of thing. I suppose you tidied stuff like that up for him.’

‘Yes.’

The marshal wandered over in the boy’s direction and planted his large hand on some papers lying on the little desk. It was too dark, anyway, to see what they were. ‘I suppose it’d be this stuff here, this insurance policy … well, in his state of health … was it this?’

‘Yes. The insurance policy.’

‘All right. Off you go. I’ll be waiting for you.’ He lifted his hand and switched on a small desk lamp. The papers were bank statements. He left the room, confident that the boy would be some time in the bathroom. Poor lad looked as sick as a dog. Fortunately, the others had paused in the central hall and were talking near the dry fountain.

‘Excuse me.’ The conversation stopped dead. T have a question for you.’ He stared straight at Porteous. What did he have to be amused about? Well, the marshal didn’t much care if Porteous thought him funny. He wanted an answer. Simple enough. ‘I was wondering … you said Sir Christopher was looking through some papers that evening and the lad can’t remember what they were. Being his secretary, I thought you likely tidied up that sort of thing—private matters and so on. So, was he looking through those old letters of his mother’s that are lying on the little desk there? The lad thought he was but I thought I should check with you.’

‘You did right. Yes, his mother’s letters. We thought we should look through them and decide what should be kept. Given his deteriorating health, Sir Christopher was trying to put everything in order.’

‘Good. Right.’ He walked away. He was aware of the silence he left behind him and it crossed his mind that he should have excused himself … or had he?

He was back in the small sitting room before the boy reappeared, his face damp, blue eyes tiny in his drawn face. He was much fairer but, perhaps because he was thin, he reminded the marshal of Toto when he knew he was in serious trouble.

The hand that descended on the trembling shoulder now was a gentler one.

‘It’s all right. Don’t be frightened of me, there’s no need. Do you believe me? Look at me. Do you believe me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, for goodness’ sake, tell me what happened.’

It was getting lighter and yet the soft rain was still falling. He tried stepping outside again, liking the smell of wet earth and what he thought were camomile flowers somewhere not far away in the long soaked grass. His mother had collected them from the fields and hung the bunches up to dry before picking their daisylike heads to make camomile tea. Teresa bought it in tea bags and put honey in it when he felt off-colour. You need somebody. It’s not right to be alone. You need a family. And the sad thing about Sir Christopher Wrothesly—the saddest thing—was that, if his view hadn’t been blocked by the so-called friends who wanted to isolate him for their own purposes, a family would have grown around him—a sister who was so in need of someone to look after once her mother had died that she ‘borrowed’ a neighbour’s child; a poor relation who respected him and cared for his garden; young Giorgio, so grateful to be rescued from the horrors of Kosovo, the only one distressed by Sir Christopher’s death. Well, he knew now the reason for that distress. He would be glad to finish with all this and get away from the oppressive weight of sadness, the soft insistent wetness on his face. He should go in and wait for the rain to stop, think over what Giorgio had told him.

‘When I left him that evening, he was ill.’

‘Giorgio, wait. Sit down. You’re shaking. There, at the little desk. No. I’m all right.’

‘He didn’t want me to go. He …’

‘Go on, I’m listening.’ He didn’t want to stand over the lad, oppressing him, or sit in front of him as though it were an interrogation. Besides, wandering about, he could reconstruct the story as it was told him. He stood now looking down at the depression in the pillow on the empty bed.

‘He reached for me with his left arm, trying to speak, but he couldn’t make any words. I knew what he wanted to say. The secretary made me go. He pushed between us and got hold of his hand but it was me he needed. I was the only one who always knew what he was trying to say.’

‘You liked him.’

‘I did like him, yes, because he was kind to me. Before the stroke he talked to me a lot, asked me about my childhood. When I told him about my father being killed he seemed really moved. My mother spent everything she had to get me out of the country. The last thing she said was, “Forget. Walk away. Start a new life.” I wanted to, I still want to, but it’s … lonely … I’ve heard nothing from anyone at home since the bombing.

‘I applied for asylum. A nice policewoman asked me about my background. My Italian’s good and I know some Russian. I had been studying medicine in Belgrade until the troubles started and I rushed home … The policewoman gave me the number of Sir Christopher’s lawyer. She said they’d taken in boys before. She warned me they were taking advantage of the situation of people like me. They’d pay me almost nothing for long hours of work but they would legalise my being in the country. It would be quicker and easier than trying for asylum and I could look about me for something better.

‘Before I came up here I was washing the floors and cleaning the toilets in a dancing school.

‘It was nearly a year and a half ago. I can’t go back! Will they send me back?’

‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘I didn’t steal the cufflinks they found in my room, I swear. I know some of the staff believe I did. The housekeeper, for one, and a few of the gardeners. I heard one of them say I was Albanian and that Albanian is just another word for thief. And that was even before the secretary said that some of the things had been found in my room when the carabinieri came the second time, the day after you talked to Sir Christopher. They might have found them but I didn’t put them there.’

‘No, no … They didn’t find anything at all.’

‘They took my fingerprints, though, and then, that day you came back with a warrant—a warrant for my arrest, that’s what I was told. Sir Christopher’s secretary told me he’d got rid of you, told you that Sir Christopher wouldn’t press charges because he’d never know, that telling him would upset him too much and he was ill. He told me not to worry, that he and Sir Christopher’s lawyer would look after me.

‘The only person I told was Jim, the English boy who works in the garden. We’re the same age and sometimes we go down to Florence together.

‘He said they were just trying to frighten me so I’d keep my mouth shut about what was going on around here. He said if you’d really found the cuff links in my room you’d have said so and asked me about it.’

‘We would.’

‘He said you were all right. But he thought, and the head gardener thought, that what that robbery was really about was the hairbrushes because of Signora Hirsch, Sir Christopher’s half sister. They thought she might have been inventing it, that there was no proof and a few hairs from the brushes could be tested for his DNA. They could do it without telling Sir Christopher and that would frighten her off if she was a fake. Then they seemed to give up on it. Of course there was no point when she died.’

‘That’s all nonsense, gossip. They stole those bits and pieces because someone in your position could easily have got rid of them. They needed you, do you understand? They wanted Sir Christopher at home where they could manipulate him as he got weaker. They didn’t want a nurse, an outsider who might testify against them. They wanted to keep you here and keep you frightened.’

‘But the housekeeper overheard …’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps they thought of it once they had the hairbrushes. It’s still no more than gossip. They knew Sara Hirsch visited here. Sir Christopher would have told them she was really his half sister. They must have realised she was unlikely to be a fake. Did you ever see her here?’

‘We all saw her. She used to come and have tea in the garden. I was with him when he saw in the paper how she’d been found dead and it was right afterwards that he had the stroke. He took a few steps away from his garden chair with the help of a walking stick and I was bringing the wheelchair nearer. He lost his grip on the stick and then he fell. He was conscious and trying hard to say something but he didn’t seem to be able to breathe properly and his face was twisted. After a few days he could manage to talk a bit better but he never mentioned his sister again. He did talk about his parents to me sometimes.’

The marshal came closer to him, looking at a photograph in a silver frame on the desk.

‘Those are his maternal grandparents. They were English. The day I told him about my father he told me that his father never talked to him much. I think he talked to me because there was never anybody else around much except for business things. After the big stroke, the secretary and the lawyer and that man who sometimes comes to look at the pictures and statues only came in here when there was something he had to sign. I suppose it was because he couldn’t speak properly anymore. I understood him most of the time. I couldn’t make out all the words but I always knew what he wanted. They moved his bed downstairs then because of the noise from the top floor.’

‘What noise?’

‘We had to move some of the statues and pictures from up there. We took them to the lemon house because it opens on to the road and they had to be taken away. They said they were going to be restored.’

‘I see. And you must have suspected that they were stealing from him. There’s no point in distressing yourself about that now. It can’t hurt him anymore.’

‘That’s not the point. The problem was he needed me and I always had to be helping them. I used to take him out on the terrace or down to his mother’s garden in his wheelchair every morning and leave him there … they made me. He was quieter in the garden than anywhere, staring across at the lily pond. It was when I had to leave him indoors after lunch that he used to get agitated. It’s a nice view from here but there isn’t much light in the room, not in the afternoons. It’s cooler that way, I suppose, but it looked so sad. He couldn’t do anything, read, or … nothing at all. Just sit in the wheelchair all the afternoon. It’s not true about reading to him either. I would have done it but they said they needed me … and … You won’t tell anyone? He was so upset at the idea that his mind would go before he died. No one has to know and
they
didn’t want anyone to know. They kept making him sign things. He couldn’t read and he was only lucid at odd moments. When he was, he cried. I think it was because he couldn’t speak. You can’t imagine …’

‘I know. My mother was the same after her stroke. She cried all the time, wanting to be taken home. She’d lived in that house over sixty years but it was her childhood home she remembered, I think.’

‘What Sir Christopher tried to ask for most often was to be taken out to where he would be quiet near the lily pond. He couldn’t understand when I tried to explain about the heat. He would reach out his left arm to point at that picture, trying to say something. They’re water lilies, that’s why. A Monet. He liked it a lot. I think when I left him alone he’d stare at it for hours and hours. Often I’d make an excuse, taking him to the bathroom and so on, and come back to see if he was all right. Sometimes he was sitting where I’d left him two or three hours before, not sleeping, just staring at the picture. Or at the wall. Once I found him over there. He was struggling to open the French windows with his left hand but that bolt’s a bit stiff and you have to be standing. It had gone dark because there was a storm coming, like today, and he was sobbing, perhaps with frustration, or else he was frightened. That’s when I started leaving a light on. One day he must have pulled himself to his feet with that brass knob on the bolt and managed to open it up in the middle of the storm. He had wheeled himself outside and soaked his shoes and socks in a puddle of rainwater. He was giggling. Sometimes he was like a child.’

The marshal walked to the French windows. ‘He could push the wheelchair himself?’

‘Oh, yes. It’s a left-handed one. He just had to turn that outer ring. Those are the marks where … those scratches …’

‘Go on.’

‘They said, “Take the night off. Go down to Florence.” It was an order. It was true that I hadn’t been out for over a month. The secretary said he’d stay with Sir Christopher and he was here in the room with him when I left. I went down on the bus. I didn’t do anything much. Ate a pizza, wandered around for a bit. I haven’t seen that much of Florence and lately I’d got used to just looking down at it from up here. It felt odd, maybe because it’s so sticky and warm down there at night, or because of the floodlights, all the tourists strolling about … there was a fire-eater in Piazza della Signoria … I don’t know, it just didn’t seem real. Every now and then the scene was lit by sheet lightning. I drank a few beers with my pizza so maybe I was a bit light-headed, and I was very nervous.’