Some Bitter Taste (5 page)

That was true. No traffic noise or fumes reached here. Alleys cluttered with mopeds, peeling shutters, prostitutes on the beat in the park, streets fouled with dog muck, bits of pizza in greasy paper, Coca-Cola cans, and hypodermics were all invisible, seething under cover of a serene pattern of red and ochre interrupted by domes and spires and blurred by a blanket of mist and pollution.

‘Serious crime? It happens, but most of my time is taken up by…’ He realised that Sir Christopher was trying to put him at his ease and if he was surprised to find the usual roles reversed he was also grateful. ‘My biggest enemy, to tell you the truth, is the heat, and what with being a bit overweight—’ Should he not have said that? After all, the other man was—

‘And no doubt, as we all do, you intend to lose weight, sometime soon.’ Sir Christopher smiled. ‘“The triumph of hope over experience”.’

A tiny plop interrupted their talk and circles widened on the surface of the pool in front of them.

‘The frogs are waking up for their evening meal. I’ve loved that fountain since I was a tiny child when I wasn’t allowed near it without a nurse. I had one nurse who told me that elves and fairies were born from the buds of water lilies and that if I was lucky enough to see one open I should see one of the little creatures sit up yawning and fly away. I never realised that it was one of many ploys for preventing me from running about. I’d had rheumatic fever, you see. It damages the heart valves. Still, her story kept me quiet for hours, and I find water lilies magical to this day. It’s a pity to have the fountain trickling so slowly but they need the still water at the edges.’

‘And aren’t you bothered with mosquitoes?’

‘Oh, no. There are the frogs, as you see, to eat them, and those little fish eat the larvae. This was my mother’s garden. As you know, all great gardens have at least one secret garden. There are two here but this one was her particular favourite. The architectural elements and the statuary are original but she chose the flowers.’

In the marshal’s opinion she hadn’t made much of a choice. Wonderful perfumes reached him, but he liked plenty of colour in a garden himself, and here such flowers as still survived the July heat were white or so pale as made no difference. He could smell lavender, but even the lavender bushes, when he spotted them, were white. Very odd, that. ‘Very nice,’ he murmured politely. ‘She must have liked white …’

‘Ah, yes, the lack of colour seems odd to you, I imagine. You’re a man who notices things, aren’t you? I would like to show you this garden as it should be seen. She called it her Night Garden. It only starts to come into its own at dusk. My mother gave dinner parties—this would be in the fifties—on the terrace up there. There’s an almost concealed “doorway” at the centre back, do you see? That’s where the guests arrived, either directly from the main driveway through a wisteria arch or along a path, covered with climbing roses, from my mother’s small drawing room. You came by a shortcut, I know, from the kitchen garden. There’s another “doorway” at the back farther to the left which you can’t see and which leads to the kitchens. The table was in a horseshoe arrangement and everyone sat behind it, for the view, you see. The moon rose over there to light the scene, and those cypresses at each side of the balustrade framed the view of Florence by night. Now you will understand her choice of flowers.’

‘They show up in the dark?’

‘Yes, but there are also flowers which give out perfume at dusk and at night.’

‘She must have had a wonderful imagination, your mother.’

‘She was a wonderful woman. Her name was Rose and she was, without question, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. You think I say so because she was my mother but when you go into the house, look at her portrait in the long drawing room. There’s a portrait of my father, too, of course … I suppose—I’ve been thinking about this almost daily of late—that we are all destined to disappoint one or the other of our parents.’ He fell silent and his pale face, which had become animated as he described the garden, faded into life-lessness again.

The marshal, remembering the tears of joy in his parents’ eyes when they first saw him in uniform, didn’t feel he should speak. He waited, listening to the crickets, the plip-plopping of the frogs, the trickle of water. He stared over at the water lilies as if waiting for one to open, trying to imagine a childhood in this place. The only things their childhoods had in common were the burning sun and the scent of oranges and lemons.

‘Are your parents alive, Marshal?’

‘No, no. My mother died about six years ago and my father long before.’

Sir Christopher sighed, shaking his head. ‘We don’t understand until it’s too late, do we? How we should talk to each other, ask forgiveness, try to understand each other, put everything in order before it’s too late. It would be simple enough but we don’t realise the necessity. My own father quarrelled with his parents and would never allow them to be mentioned. I remember on my first visit to England with him I tried to ask him about his home, his childhood. His only answer was, “My life began when I met your mother.” Had he, in some way, let them down just as I … I could never have been what my father wanted—the English school, the sports, the riding to hounds …’

‘Well, no. From what you’ve said of your ill health …’

‘If you knew how I thanked God for my ill health that saved me from being sent away from this dear place to some dreadful boys’ school and spared that unfortunate grey pony from my unwilling attentions. I used to be sent down to the paddock beyond the olive groves over there with titbits to give him. I was very careful not to be seen tossing the stuff over the wall so as not to go near him. Then I’d settle under an olive tree with the book from my pocket and read for an hour or so while the pony gobbled the bits of apple and carrot and then returned to his peaceful grazing. I wonder what happened to him in the end? Sold, I suppose. Why did my father want me to be so
English?
My dear mother did what she could to protect me without ever contradicting him. At least until she gave up and withdrew so deeply into herself that no one, not even I, could reach her.’

Sir Christopher rested his head on the high back of his wicker chair. His eyes were closed. ‘Marshal, I really must thank you.’

What could he possibly mean?

‘I must thank you because, for some reason, I find myself able to talk about this garden to you and some of the memories it evokes. Until today I have always avoided coming in here. My mother turned against it and then … Nothing romantic, I’m afraid. My mother died in a clinic. Of cancer. Just in case you imagined something dramatic happening here.’

‘No,’ said the marshal truthfully. He never imagined things.

‘You were probably told that I’m ill and that I’m too proud to admit to it.’

‘Something like that’

‘You are a man who notices things. I’m inclined to think you are also a man who understands things … people. At any rate, that’s the impression you give me, the effect you have on me. What can I say? I know I won’t live long and, unlike a drowning man, I am seeing my whole life pass very slowly before me. Every day my lawyer visits me and every day I find myself unable to make a final draft of my will. A will is a documention not just of a man’s property but of a man’s life. I suppose you’re married, children and so on?’

‘Yes. Yes, lam.’

‘So the script is in many ways written for you. I must invent my own. I have no heirs. I have, thank God, some fixed points in my life, true lifelong friends. My lawyer is one of them. Dear Renato, too, whose taste for fine paintings and statuary has always guided my own—more so than my father’s, I think. And, of course, Jeremy Porteous, whom you’ve met. He has been with me since he was nineteen and he never leaves my side.’

“You’re lucky, then,’ lied the marshal, who wouldn’t fancy an arrangement like that at all. As for employing a nineteen-year-old as a secretary … well, the man’s private life was his own business.

‘Yes, yes, I am lucky. If my art had been appreciated as it deserved I would have little to regret and, of course, that happens to so many artists. Galleries these days are nothing but cheap commercial ventures, run by people with no cultural background, no aesthetic sense. My work, on the other hand, has been admired by some of the most important people in the civilised world for whom this house has been a meeting point. But—well, I mustn’t burden you. I want to thank you, as I said. I got up the courage this very day to come into my mother’s garden. An attempt to reconcile all the suppressed elements of my past. It’s as if I knew that the coincidence of that minor theft would provide me with someone to whom I could talk about the garden and about its beauties instead of thinking only of sad memories. I must think over my life, I must examine every corner, dark as well as light. Reconcile everything, accept everything.’

‘I understand. It’s often easier with a stranger.’

‘With the right stranger.’

The marshal muttered some incomprehensible politeness and then, as the other still kept his eyes closed, started reading the list of stolen goods to give him time to recover. Silver hairbrushes and combs, silver stud box, cufflinks and tie pins. The marshal paused and looked around him. What could it feel like to own all this? The knickknacks on the list had approximate values beside them. His entire overdraft didn’t equal the price of a pair of silver hairbrushes with JW engraved on their backs. The marshal had no romantic notions about money not buying happiness. It bought a great deal of comfort and security and for him it would have bought the presence of his wife and growing babies in those years of his mother’s long agony after the stroke. Those years couldn’t be retrieved. Teresa, stuck down in Syracuse helping to care for his mother, had lived without the comfort of her husband, bringing up the boys single-handedly. You need money in this life. But not too much of it or it starts up a whole new set of problems—fear of kidnapping, fear of a stock exchange crash, virulent family quarrels, distrust of everyone around you. Sickness and death got you, anyway … Was the man asleep? He was facing death and his best friend was his lawyer … He was asleep. The marshal got to his feet in relief at the sound of the captain’s brisk footsteps on some distant path. It wasn’t quite as hot as it had been but his ineptness at talking to Sir Christopher had made him nervous and he removed his dark glasses to put a handkerchief to his forehead. At once the low sun attacked his eyes and he hurriedly dried them before putting his glasses back on.

Sir Christopher was awake and getting up.

‘I haven’t in some way upset you, have I? I do beg your pardon.’ He looked more puzzled than concerned.

‘No, no. It’s an allergy I have. Sunlight makes my eyes water. That will be Captain Maestrangelo coming along now. You must excuse me. No, please. There’s no need …’

Sir Christopher walked a few steps with him as far as the lily pond. It was typical of the marshal’s clumsiness that in turning to shake hands there he almost tripped on a tilted slab of marble whose lower edges were obscured by a mat of little white flowers.

‘I’m sorry … I do apologise.’ He’d stood on what looked like a small marble gravestone near the base of the fountain. This place was a minefield of embarrassments.

‘Not your fault at all. Those charming flowers do obscure the path, I’m afraid.
“Medio defonte leporum” …
such true words.’

‘In the middle of the fountain … yes,’ hazarded the marshal, recognising a couple of Italian words in the inscription. The rest was Greek to him.

‘Ah yes, I’ve always heard they teach Latin better in Italian schools than English ones. You obviously weren’t as bad a student as I was. I never went to school—my illness and so on—but my tutor was an Englishman and, I’m afraid, rather unimaginative. I’m sure I failed every Latin test he ever gave me. “Hamilcar Hannibalis pater, dux Carthaginiensis …” Why do they think all little boys are interested in war? Of course, you’re a military man yourself. I beg your pardon.’

The marshal was still staring down.

‘Was it a cat that died?’ Bit small for a dog and too big for a canary.

‘No, my dear Marshal, there is nothing buried there. Ah, Jeremy, have you shown the captain everything?’

‘Yes, and he has already spoken to Giorgio.’

‘I wanted to set your mind at rest on that score, if possible.’

‘And is it possible?’

‘As far as I can tell at this stage, yes. I understand you pay him more than adequately and he wants for nothing. He seems much attached to you and well aware that he would have everything to lose and nothing to gain by risking your displeasure for the sake of a few pieces of silver which he would necessarily be forced to sell quickly and badly. I believe him.’

Sir Christopher, who had hung on to every word of this speech as though his life depended on it, breathed deeply and held out his hand.

‘I thank you, Captain, I thank you from my heart. And this good man, too. Will I see you again?’ This was addressed to the marshal and the look which went with it was almost pleading.

It was Maestrangelo who reassured him. ‘The marshal will be present during the fingerprinting and will bring your copy of the report for signature. He will talk to the rest of the staff.’

‘And to me, too, I hope. I have enjoyed our talk today very much.’

It seemed as if he meant it and yet he turned and walked away from them to sink back into the wicker chair as though he had on the instant forgotten their existence.

He won’t live long, the marshal thought, recognising that tired detachment. He’s ready to go and can’t write his script, as he calls it, can’t find the exit.

They drove down the winding Viale dei Colli. The trees were lit from below, pink and gold like theatre spodights. The captain said, ‘A wonderful sunset…’

The marshal said, ’You were satisfied with the boy’s story, then? Or did you just want to keep Sir Christopher calm?’

‘I’m not altogether satisfied—oh, as to the boy, Giorgio, as they call him, his real name’s Gjergj Lisi, an illegal immigrant—Albanian from Kosovo—but they legalised his status. He was a medical student. He’s quiet, intelligent, and desperately grateful to be here. Besides, the robbery’s for you to deal with—no, I’m not satisfied because what brought me up here was the idea of being in the house of a man who owns, actually owns, a Leonardo drawing.’