The Dividing Stream (12 page)

Enzo had picked up the basket with a sigh and she at once attempted to take it from him. ‘‘Let me have it. It’s not heavy. You were walking the other way.’’

‘‘Don’t be silly, Mother. It’s far too heavy for you. No wonder you have back-ache.’’ Each word he spoke seemed to be dragged lifeless out of some secret pit of despair. For, once he had seen his mother stumbling over the cobbles, the light gleaming on that pathetic bare patch of scalp, he had plunged from his former mood of mild pessimism into depths into which his naturally hopeful spirit as a rule seldom penetrated. He had always hated the ugly fact that she should support them, dulling her youth that his father might drink, his brother whore, and he wander the streets and play an occasional game of football; but this hatred had never been so intense as now.

For, tonight, he seemed to have acquired a new vision which made him see things with desolating clarity instead of through the old, good-natured haze; and just as he had suddenly rebelled against the worn, obscene phrases in which he and his friends discussed women, so now he rebelled against the idea, once accepted but now atrocious, that his mother should slaye twelve hours a day to support three men.

‘‘But you don’t want to come home yet,’’ Signora Rocchigiani protested, still struggling with the handle of the basket as she panted beside her son. ‘‘It’s far too early for you.’’

‘‘I’m not coming home at all tonight, Mother.’’

‘‘Oh, Enzo!’’ The exclamation of disappointment was pitiful. ‘‘Not again! Why do you do it?’’

‘‘I did nothing,’’ he said with sudden hardness, removing the arm he had put round her shoulder. ‘‘ But I won’t have him insulting me. Next time I’ll hit him,’’ he said, scowling and drawing down the corners of his mouth.

She laughed, but she was almost on the verge of tears. ‘‘You look so frightening like that! Please don’t pull such faces.’’ He smiled, against his will, and she said: ‘‘That’s better.… But why do you two always quarrel? And always when I’m not at home.’’

‘‘It’s got to stop, Mother, it can’t go on like this. I shall have to go away, that’s all.’’

‘‘Oh, don’t be so silly, don’t say such things!’’

‘‘But it’s true,’’ he said gloomily. ‘‘I must go somewhere else. He hates me,’’ he added.

They said nothing more until they reached the corner of the Borgo, and then Signora Rocchigiani pleaded: ‘‘ Come back with me and say you’re sorry. Just say you’re sorry. Enzo—please!’’

But he remained stubbornly mute, and taking the basket from him with a light yet inexpressibly mournful sigh and a shrug of the shoulders, she went on her way. He watched her as she moved between the tall, dilapidated houses until she put down the basket, fumbled in a pocket and came hurrying back. ‘‘You’d better have this,’’ she said. ‘‘It was a tip, so he needn’t know about it. I expect you’re hungry.’’

‘‘No, really, Mother——’’

‘‘Take it.’’

In despair he took from her outstretched hand the grubby, tattered bundle of five and ten lire notes; and in despair he found himself wandering on and on through the town, like an automaton, heedless and tireless, while the crowds slowly thinned, the noise from the open-air cafés sank into silence, and the houses, their lights one by one extinguished, stretched upward, narrowed and became less and less friendly to the homeless wanderer. But the Uffizi had always been friendly to such as him. From the deserted Signoria a river of moonlight flowed between the two colonnades until, making a delta of the terrace beyond, where a few lonely figures could still be seen crouching or leaning, it tumbled, like some sudden new tributary, into the Arno below. On the first bench a woman slept clutching a child whose back-tilted head gave the impression of being half-severed from a neck that curved swan-like in the moonlight. On the second bench an old man crouched, appearing to have suddenly woken to face death as one hand pulled what was either a tattered rug or an overcoat up to his chin. On the third bench Enzo lay, and putting his arms under his head as a pillow, gazed up at the dusty, cob-webbed panes of the electric lantern which dangled from the vaulted ceiling on the end of a rusty iron chain. There was interest in the extreme despair of his expression and beauty in the extreme languor of his pose, and so it was not surprising that passers-by, usually foreigners, should from time to time slow their homeward pace to stare. To-morrow they would be staring with the same mixture of bewilderment and admiration at the pictures in the gallery beneath which Enzo, and the rest of the city’s outcasts, now sheltered like insects under some vast, elaborate stone. But that was an irony which he, who had never visited the Uffizi, probably failed to appreciate.

‘‘H
EAVENS
!’’ Pamela exclaimed when she came into her brother’s room and found him unpacking. ‘‘All that tissue-paper! You didn’t do it yourself, did you?’’ She was carrying a hair-brush and at once began to brush her hair with long, competent strokes, as ‘‘ Did you?’’ she repeated, ‘‘did you?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ Colin admitted, continuing to place his clothes in cupboards and chests-of-drawers.

‘‘I thought only school-matrons packed like that. You are funny, Colin. Sometimes I find it difficult to believe that you’re just a boy. Do you like clothes?’’

‘‘If one spends money on them, one might as well look after them.’’

‘‘I think you do like them,’’ Pamela declared. ‘‘I suppose it must give one a feeling of superiority to be well dressed,’’ she added, without intentional malice.

‘‘One feels there’s less to be criticized,’’ Colin admitted frankly. He had always been afraid of criticism; and because he knew that, in his inmost being, he deviated so far from what he had been taught to regard as the normal schoolboy, in all external details he was careful to conform with resolute fidelity.

‘‘I’m afraid there must be a lot to criticize in my appearance,’’ Pamela confessed, without apparently wishing it were otherwise. ‘‘At school Miss Preston asked me who chose my clothes and when I said I chose them myself, of course she was surprised. She thought Mummy should choose them for me.’’ She sighed: ‘‘I wish she did! She does dress well, doesn’t she?’’

‘‘Carelessly, but well,’’ Colin agreed.

‘‘As she does most things.… Oh, I’m tired of brushing my hair! Everyone at school tells me I’ve got beautiful hair; but that’s just a nice way of saying it’s the only presentable thing about me.’’ She flung down the brush and, jumping off the bed, picked up a neatly wrapped bundle and began to unwind it, exclaiming as she did so: ‘‘What is it? What is it?.… Oh, it’s a bottle of eau-de-Cologne! You don’t use it, do you?’’ She had unscrewed the cap and now she took a sip. ‘‘ One of the girls in the dormitory got drunk on eau-de-Cologne.… Oh, it burns!’’ she cried out; and she hurried over to the wash-basin and began to gulp water.

‘‘Serve you right,’’ Colin said.

‘‘What’s it for?’’ his sister asked again.

‘‘For after shaving.’’

‘‘Shaving! But you don’t shave.’’

‘‘Of course I do. Don’t be silly.’’

‘‘Well, it must be a new idea. I’m sure you don’t have to. You’ve got less hair than I have—at least I’ve a small moustache! Let me feel.’’ She attempted to touch his cheek, but he at once pulled away from her, and a struggle began.

As usual, Pamela was victorious. ‘‘You only shave because it seems grown-up,’’ she taunted. ‘‘Your face is quite smooth. I knew it was.… Now don’t be cross,’’ she added, seeing how he was scowling as he emptied an armful of rolled socks into a drawer.

‘‘We should be in bed,’’ Colin said.

‘‘I know we should. And asleep, after that long journey. But I feel too excited.’’ She stretched out her plumply pink arms to the open window: ‘‘Lovely, lovely Florence!’’

‘‘You’ve hardly seen it,’’ Colin remarked drily.

‘‘I know, but what I have seen … And Miss Preston says it’s the most beautiful place in Europe.’’ She let herself topple head first into an arm-chair, while Colin exclaimed: ‘‘ Oh, do mind those shirts! You’ll crush them, you fool.’’

‘‘Sorry. Yes, I have, crushed this collar.’’ With clumsy fingers she attempted to press the rucked edge smooth once again. ‘‘ Colin, do you think I was awfully rude to Mummy?’’

‘‘She deserved it. It was wrong of her not to be at the station. Not because of us, but because of Nicko.’’

‘‘She cares for him,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘ She cares for him a lot. That’s what I can’t understand. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had been just us, because we know we’re not really important to her, but Nicko being there made it different. I was furious and I just had to show it, I couldn’t help myself. I haven’t your control.’’

‘‘It’s not control, only cowardice,’’ he said with the honesty they always showed each other. ‘‘I wanted to say the same things.’’

‘‘Oh, I’m glad of that, Colin. Because I thought that perhaps I’d been unfair to her. And I don’t
want
to be unfair. After all she’s really been quite decent to us, hasn’t she? I mean, she’s never been unkind in any way, as stepmothers so often are.’’

‘‘Sometimes I wish she had,’’ Colin said, drawing a silk tie through his fingers so that it made a gentle swish. ‘‘It’s not very pleasant not to be cared about, one way or the other.’’

‘‘Oh, I think this is better than being disliked,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘ I’m sure it’s better.’’ She went out on to the balcony and leant over, the night breeze filling the legs of her pyjamas as if they were sails. ‘‘Come out here,’’ she called. ‘‘Oh come on! Be a sport!’’

Side by side they stood, the thin, compact boy holding himself stiffly beside the relaxed and sprawling body of his sister, until Pamela gathered the saliva in her mouth, and with a muttered ‘‘Look!’’ spat down on to the gleaming semi-circle of light before the swing-doors. ‘‘ Good shot!’’ she applauded herself, and as a white-haired man, accompanied by a young woman, emerged from the doors, she spat once again. ‘‘You try,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ve no more spit left.… Oh, feeble!’’ She could not help laughing at Colin as he leant gingerly over the balustrade, pursed his lips and, with the utmost deliberation, let fall a thin thread of spittle which the breeze tugged, broke and at last wholly disintegrated. ‘‘ You spit as you throw a cricket-ball,’’ she said, insensitive, as she so often was, to the shame her brother felt at his own incapacity. ‘‘It’s funny you can’t throw over-arm. You ought to learn. But you’re not really interested, are you?’’

‘‘No,’’ he agreed shortly. But that was not true. Secretly it worried him that he was so obviously the physical inferior of the other boys at school, being gauche when they were graceful and weak when they were strong. He envied them their ability, and was ashamed for his own lack. But he would never admit this, except to himself, and his pose was not to care for games and to despise those that did.

‘‘Children! What are you doing? … After your bath, too, Pamela.’’ Mrs. Bennett had come into the room, and was calling to them in a high-pitched, scolding voice; but she did not really wish to scold them, as the children well knew.

‘‘Come here, Granny,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘Do come here.’’

‘‘No, you come here.’’ But Mrs. Bennett had already gone across to them. ‘‘ You’ll catch a fearful cold, there’s the mist off the river.… What are you doing, child?’’

‘‘Spitting.’’

‘‘Spitting! … What a disgusting idea!’’

‘‘Look, I’ve just hit that man.’’

‘‘Come here, at once!’’ Mrs. Bennett went over to the balustrade and grabbed Pamela’s arm. ‘‘Which man?’’ she asked, suddenly peering down.

‘‘That one.’’

‘‘That’s Mr. Maskell.’’ Mrs. Bennett exclaimed with a mingling of horror and delight, and the two children at once burst into giggles. ‘‘No, it’s not funny, not in the least funny. It’s a disgusting, insanitary game. Come in at once. You don’t want to get the reputation of being street children, do you? Come in, Pamela! Pamela! … No, it’s not nice, that sort of thing,’’ Mrs. Bennett repeated more quickly as the children at last obeyed her. Then, as if she had completely forgotten about their misbehaviour, she went on: ‘‘I’d have been in earlier to tuck you both up, but Nicko was crying. He wouldn’t stop.’’

‘‘Whom did he want!’’ Pamela asked.

‘‘I think he was overtired,’’ Mrs. Bennett answered evasively.

‘‘Didn’t he want Mummy?’’

‘‘Little children always call for their mothers when they feel miserable,’’ Mrs. Bennett said, as if she had to defend Karen’s absence.

‘‘Mummy might have stayed in tonight, she might have guessed that he would want her.’’

‘‘He was asleep when she went in to see him.’’

‘‘I think she’s selfish,’’ Pamela said. ‘‘Don’t you, Colin?’’

‘‘I suppose you’re talking about me,’’ a voice said behind them. ‘‘It must have been an absorbing topic to have kept you up so late.… You look tired, Mother, you really should go to bed.’’

‘‘Granny has had to sit up with Nicko,’’ Colin said coldly.

‘‘Has she? What’s the matter?’’ Either Karen wished to ignore the oblique accusation or else she had not felt it. ‘‘ I expect he’s overtired,’’ she answered her own question, in the way that was most satisfactory to her conscience. ‘‘It was a long journey. And you, too, have had a long journey,’’ she continued to the children. ‘‘I think you should turn in.’’

‘‘Yes, bed,’’ said Max, who had been leaning silently in the doorway, his whole weight on one flexed arm.

‘‘I hadn’t noticed you, Daddy,’’ Pamela said in surprise.

‘‘Am I as small as that?’’ Max asked with an awkward attempt at humour. ‘‘Am I?’’

Karen had wandered out on to the balcony and was standing there, gazing at the river. She beat a small tattoo with the palms of her hands on the stone parapet, and gave a deep sigh; then she walked up and down the balcony two or three times, her arms crossed over her breast. The wind blew her fair hair across her face, and her flesh gleamed, blue-white, like snow in the moonlight.

When she returned to the room, Pamela asked: ‘‘Why are you so restless, Mummy?’’

Karen gave a laugh: ‘‘I’m not restless.’’

‘‘You looked as if you were waiting for someone.’’

‘‘I wish I was?’’

‘‘You’re restless,’’ Pamela repeated.

‘‘Now back to your room, Pamela,’’ Max put in. ‘‘It’s past eleven o’clock.… Pamela—do what I say!’’