The Dividing Stream (16 page)

‘‘You should be ashamed,’’ Chris said playfully. ‘‘You foreigners are all in the black market. I think it’s disgraceful—don’t you, Karen?’’ she appealed, boldly using the Christian name for the first time.

Karen shrugged her shoulders, while von Arbach straightened himself in the doorway and, catching sight of the crutches that had just been brought for Colin, picked them up and attempted to use them.

‘‘What
are
you doing?’’ Chris demanded in delighted amusement. ‘‘Whatever next! You naughty boy!’’ She giggled and remonstrated at one and the same time, while the Swede hopped back and forth across the room. ‘‘But they’re too small for you! You’ll break them.’’

‘‘Yes, please take care,’’ Colin said. ‘‘If you’d like a chocolate,’’ he added in conciliation, ‘‘ there’s a box open on the table.’’

‘‘Frigor!’’ exclaimed Chris. ‘‘Swiss chocolates! Well, you are lucky.’’ She had always found it difficult to conceal her greed, and she now stooped above the box, barely able to restrain herself from clutching a whole handful.

‘‘Do take one,’’ Colin said.

‘‘H’m—heaven,
heaven
.’’ She closed her eyes and swayed from side to side, as she did when she and von Arbach danced together. ‘‘Have one, Béngt. Go on.’’

‘‘Yes, do have one,’’ Colin said.

The Swede did not refuse.

‘‘Have you seen my birthday present to Béngt?’’ Chris said. ‘‘ It was his birthday yesterday. Fancy, he’s only twenty-three. Doesn’t that make us all feel ancient? Except you, young rascal,’’ she added to Colin. She had taken the towel from under the Swede’s arm and now unrolled it to display a pair of gleaming white-satin bathing-trunks, with a monogram embroidered in red silk in one corner. ‘‘Aren’t they the twee-est you ever saw?’’ she asked Karen. ‘‘But I tell Kim that when he wears them everyone will think he’s a pansy.… Not that he cares—he just loves to be looked at and admired. He’s so vain. Aren’t you?’’ she said to the Swede, who, once more slouching in the doorway, did no more than shift his stance with a faint, slightly contemptuous smile and a downward flutter of his Mongolian eyelids.

‘‘Well, we mustn’t tire the patient,’’ Chris said, feeling that somehow she had been deflected from her purpose in the visit and that, for that reason, it had been a failure. ‘‘Is there anything we can get you?’’

‘‘No, I don’t think so, thank you.’’

‘‘Sure? … Well, bye-bye for now.’’ She raised one hand and waggled the fingers, so that her three ‘‘chunky’’ bracelets clattered against each other.

‘‘Won’t you have another chocolate?’’ Colin said.

Chris glanced at the open box, and then said: ‘‘ Well, if you press me.…’’ She giggled: ‘‘Aren’t I a pig? But you must be a pig, too, Béngt.’’

Béngt had no objection to being a pig.

This visit was followed by one from Maisie Brandon who entered the room, taking excessively small, tottering steps on giddy high-heels. She was laden with presents. The pebbles once again rattled in their tin can as she laughed: ‘‘What a relief to dump that lot! The chauffeur offered to help me carry them but I felt sure he’d drop stone-dead of heart-failure if I let him. He’s ninety if he’s a day. Oh, good lad! You’ve eaten nearly all those chocolates.’’ She peered into the box of Frigor which had come as a present from her the day before. ‘‘ I’ve got some more for you here, and a sort of miniature tank which climbs over anything when you wind it up’’—it was characteristic that she should have chosen a gift that was wholly unsuited to Colin’s tastes—‘‘and here’s another jig-saw, the
Queen Mary
, or is it the
Queen Elizabeth
? … Well, how are you?’’ She cut short Colin’s polite speech of thanks. ‘‘Oh, my poor feet! I could use those crutches myself. How are you?’’

Colin said that he was feeling better, and then asked about life up at the villa; he was always amused by Maisie Brandon’s stories of Lady Newton.

‘‘Oh, hell! Absolute H-E-Double-L, my pet. There are all those lavatories, row upon row of them, and one just clanks and clanks and clanks, and not a trickle comes! It was not so bad before all the servants except the cook and chauffeur left, because one could have buckets of water carried up—I insisted on it, in spite of all Lady N.’s objections. But things get worse and worse each day. Heaven knows when any more servants will be found, because, of course, she’s notorious all over Florence. She hadn’t paid the last lot for over three months; she says she can’t think about anything while she’s working—and that means me too. Every morning after breakfast she locks herself into her study and I don’t see her until eight o’clock dinner—by which time she’s usually in a vile temper because the book won’t go right.’’

‘‘The book?’’

‘‘Yes, it’s her life work, her last tribute to the memory of Amberson Lane. She was a painter, you know. And Lady N. is writing her life—that dreadful life of hers.’’ She had almost said ‘‘that dreadful Lesbian life of hers”, but had checked herself, realizing that the adjective might be too sophisticated even for Colin’s ears. ‘‘Can you believe it? God knows what the Italians will make of all that sex among the V.A.D.
S
.’’ She made a little grimace and drew her bony shoulders together. ‘‘ But I don’t honestly suppose a single page will ever see the light of print.’’

In the knowledge that Colin was one of the few children she could entertain merely by being herself she rattled on agreeably enough until Enzo and Rodolfo came in. Then, with an awkwardness strange in a woman of her experience, she nodded to them, mumbled ‘‘
Buon’ giorno
’’, and clumsily excused herself before hurrying out.

Rodolfo gripped Colin’s hands and Enzo followed, all three of them giggling in a mixture of excitement and embarrassment. Rodolfo was carrying a jam-jar crammed with large, dusty leaves and he now presented it to Colin, twisting it round to reveal an enormous hairy, purple caterpillar which lay supine against the blurred glass like a large pod of beans. Emerald pellets, the size of hundreds and thousands, were scattered around it. It made Colin feel squeamish but from the excited gestures and exclamations of the two Italians he understood that the caterpillar would one day become a rare butterfly. Enzo had found it by the river.

In return Colin offered the boys both fruit and chocolates, and while Rodolfo sucked an orange with noisy intentness, he and Enzo began to play draughts. The Florentine always lost, acknowledging defeat with an amused shrug of the shoulders and a laugh. He was stupid, he seemed to be declaring; the English were so clever.

‘‘I’ve a visitor for you,’’ Karen suddenly announced round the door in the middle of one of these games. ‘‘You probably won’t remember him from the night you broke your leg.’’

The two Italians leapt to their feet, Rodolfo concealing the half-sucked orange behind his back, while Colin blinked at his step-mother three or four times in rapid succession as if a handful of dust had been thrown into his eyes.

‘‘I don’t …’’ he began. ‘‘Please, Mummy, don’t let him——’’

But Frank Ross had already entered the room and now strode across to the bed to squeeze the child’s limp, reluctant hand in his own. He was wearing the khaki shorts and tunic in which Karen had first seen him on the road to Siena, and a pair of grey plimsolls; Colin noticed that his knees were covered in scars. ‘‘Let’s have some fresh air,’’ he said, and going to the french windows, he pushed both halves wide open. ‘‘That’s better. There’s an awful fug in here.’’ In Italian he asked the two boys what they had been doing, and they explained falteringly, with blushes and downcast eyes, that they had been having a game.

‘‘Colonel Ross has come to play chess with you,’’ Karen said. ‘‘ I told him you were the school champion.’’

‘‘We were in the middle of a game of draughts,’’ Colin protested.

‘‘I don’t think that’s very polite, is it?’’ Karen said. ‘‘ You can play draughts any time. The boys are always here. Besides, it’s a babies’ game, it’s not like chess. You know you can always win at draughts easily and that’s not good. Things are not worth doing unless they cost an effort.’’

Frank Ross laughed. ‘‘How strange to hear that sentiment from you—the attraction of the difficult.’’ Karen flushed as he continued: ‘‘Oh, let the blighter do as he likes. If he’d rather finish his game of draughts, that’s O.K. by me.’’

But Colin knew that he would have to play. ‘‘Perhaps Rodolfo would like to finish the game with Enzo for me,’’ he said. ‘‘It shouldn’t take him more than five moves,’’ he could not resist adding with a touch of pride.

Karen picked up the draughts board and carried it across to the corner where Rodolfo was once more squatting, and then watched as the two Italians self-consciously took up the threads of the interrupted game. Enzo, who had already decided that evening by the Arno that Karen was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, felt too dazed by her nearness to play with any skill; his hand trembled whenever he touched one of his pieces. The Englishwoman noticed this and was amused; physically Enzo was not unattractive to her.

Meanwhile Frank Ross was attempting to beat Colin, and finding the task more difficult than he had supposed. He despised himself for the importance he set on a victory, as he always despised himself when he caught himself out in some simple conceit or ambition; it was only to his more subtle conceits and ambitions that he remained strangely blind. Twice he thought he had the boy checkmated and twice, to his irritation, he realized he had been mistaken. He had begun to bite the nail’s of his left hand in the intervals of waiting for his opponent’s moves. ‘‘Heavens, you are a slow-coach,’’ he exclaimed. ‘‘It takes you a month of Sundays to make up your mind.’’

‘‘Winning is always important to Colin,’’ Karen put in. It was untrue, except on this occasion, when to defeat the stranger seemed to the boy a matter of extreme urgency, he could not have said why; but he made no answer to the taunt, continuing to frown down at the board until Karen said: ‘‘Enzo and Rodolfo have had seven games of draughts since you began.’’

‘‘Draughts isn’t chess. You said yourself that draughts was a babies’ game.’’

‘‘Suppose we talk a little less and get on with the move,’’ Frank Ross said, now leaving his nails and beginning to crack the joints of his left hand in the powerful grip of his right. He sat on a cane-bottomed chair, leaning forward with his legs wide apart so that the short golden hairs on the inside of his naked thighs glistened in the sunlight.

‘‘That’s not very clever,’’ he said, only to realize that the move was far cleverer than he had imagined.

‘‘What’s the matter with you?’’ Karen said, coming and putting a hand on Ross’s shoulder, so that she could feel the bone through his thin khaki tunic. ‘‘I thought you were supposed to be good.’’

‘‘Oh, shut up, do. It doesn’t help to have your ill-informed comments,’’ he answered in a voice so matter-of-fact that for a moment it took the sting out of his rudeness.

Karen said ‘‘Thank you,’’ using a phrase which is always the most feeble of retorts, and then slowly went back to the game of draughts, while Frank Ross muttered: ‘‘ That’s more like it. I never could stand being shouted at from the touchline. Particularly by a woman.’’

The game was still uncompleted when Mrs. Bennett came in half an hour later. She had already been introduced to Frank Ross and she gave him a curt nod and an almost irritable ‘‘ Please don’t get up’’ before she went across to Karen. ‘‘It’s about Nicko,’’ she said. ‘‘The maid tells me that he again wet his bed last night.’’

‘‘You say it as if it was my fault,’’ Karen answered.

‘‘He hasn’t done it for years,’’ the elder woman pursued.

‘‘It’s very naughty of him. It’s sheer laziness.… Oh, really, Mother, I know in the old days at the school you always used to say it was the parents who should be scolded for that sort of thing, not the children. But I can’t see how either Max or I can be blamed. Well, can we?’’

‘‘The child’s not happy. He hasn’t been happy ever since he came here.’’

‘‘The heat and the food have upset him, that’s all.’’ Karen looked round, as she heard the click-clack of the chess-pieces being tumbled into their box. ‘‘Well?’’ she said.

‘‘Stalemate,’’ Frank answered her. ‘‘ He almost won.’’

‘‘Good for Colin!’’ Karen said. She had ceased to want Frank to win after he had been rude to her. ‘‘Well done, darling.’’

Frank was standing over the two Italians, his hands tucked into his wide belt, as Karen said: ‘‘What do you think should be done with a child who keeps wetting his bed?’’

‘‘Oh, beat him,’’ he threw out, in a way which made it impossible to tell whether he was joking or in earnest.

‘‘Full marks for that suggestion,’’ Mrs. Bennett said, sinking into the chair which Ross had just left. Where his bare thighs had rested the wood was unpleasantly warm and moist with sweat. She took Colin’s hand between her own and said: ‘‘I’m worried about Nicko. Be nice to him, dear.’’

‘‘I always am nice to him,’’ the boy returned truthfully.

‘‘I know you are. But be extra nice.’’

Frank Ross had picked up the sketch-book which Mrs. Bennett had thrown on to the dressing-table when she had first come in, and had been quietly flicking over page after page. Now he sauntered over to the bed, sat down and said: ‘‘Some of these are fine.’’ He was holding the book open at the sketch of Enzo and Rodolfo asleep. ‘‘This for instance. Karen told me you painted, but I never thought—never for a moment …’’

Mrs. Bennett stared at him, one hand making the familiar gesture of scratching the grape-like swellings on her long, bare legs; then she shot forward, the book was twitched from his grasp. ‘‘I’ll thank you for that,’’ she said. A crimson flush swept over her, concentrated on her forehead and her cheek-bones; she was trembling with rage. ‘‘Another time please ask my permission before you look at my private belongings.’’

‘‘Mother, don’t be so silly,’’ Karen protested, while the two Italians lumbered up from the floor, realizing that something had gone wrong without knowing what.

‘‘I’m sorry,’’ Ross said with a rare, and genuine humility. He liked Mrs. Bennett and wished to be liked by her in return, as he always wished to be liked by those he could not impress. Sometimes she reminded him of the aunt, now dead, who had been responsible for bringing him up with a discipline few fathers could achieve; she had the same ability to be both tender and hard, without the one interfering with the other. ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ he repeated. ‘‘It was rude of me. It was lying there, and it seemed so harmless to look. I didn’t think you’d mind.’’