The Takeover (7 page)

‘Oh, I do see that.’

‘A cheque would tie him to me even more. I could never get rid of him.’

‘No, I see that. He’d think he was in with you again. But gold is appreciating in value, isn’t it?’

‘Such a damn cheek,’ Maggie said. ‘I hate him.’

Later, in Maggie’s room, they counted the coins and made a list. It was Mary’s idea to make a list. She made lists of everything. A good part of her mornings was spent on list-making. She had lists for entertaining and for shopping. She listed her clothes, her expenditure and her correspondence. She kept lists of her books and music and furniture. She wrote them by hand, then typed them later in alphabetical or chronological order according as might be called for. Sometimes she made a card index when the subject was complex, such as the winter season’s dinner parties, whom she had dined with and whom she had asked, what she had worn and when. Now she was making a list of the coins while Maggie took off her clothes, and got right into bed for her afternoon rest. Mary took her unfinished list and the coin-box quietly out of the room when Maggie fell asleep, and now she was in her own room sorting and writing seriously. She felt useful. Even though it was to be a secret from Michael, this help she was giving to Maggie was almost like helping Michael. Maggie, asleep in the next room, was much the same as if Michael were lying down there, having an afternoon sleep.

‘Q. Vict,’ she wrote, ‘½
SOV
. 1842.’

She grasped quickly that there were no numismatic rarities; the value of the coins was largely commercial. At that, they added up to a considerable amount. They were mostly English half-sovereigns, early and late “Victorian, bearing the Queen’s young head and her older head. Mary found a sovereign of the reign of George IV and, realizing its extra value, wondered if Maggie had put it in by mistake. She put the coin aside, then, on the thought that Maggie might think her critical or stingy, put it back in the box and marked it on her list. The main idea was to please Maggie and show she understood her position. Maggie, after all, was being very delicate in her treatment of Hubert. Mary began to consider various means of conveying this treasure to him without betraying its origin. When she realized how impossible it would be for her to simply drive or walk over to the house herself and hand it over to him, she felt a waif-like longing to do so; she saw herself for a brief moment as an outcast from what appeared to her as a world of humour and sophistication which Hubert had brought with him during those few months she had known him, when he was still in Maggie’s good favour. At the same time she disapproved of him as a proposition in Maggie’s life. He really had no right to this golden fortune. Her mood swivelled and she imagined with satisfaction a dramatic little scene of handsome Hubert being thrown out of Maggie’s house by the police.

Her list was complete. She closed the box and stood up. From the window she caught sight of a shining black head in the greenery below. She recognized Lauro and at the same time the idea came to her that, obviously, Lauro would be the person to carry this box to Hubert. She was convinced of his discretion and, after all, he had worked for Hubert once.

Mary went immediately to Maggie’s room clutching the box. Maggie was still asleep. Her mouth was open and she slept noisily. The girl felt guilty, watching this uncomely sleep. Maggie, if wakened, would know she had been watched. Mary retreated, deciding to act on her own and rightly perceiving how gratified Maggie would be to wake up and find her plan accomplished; she would feel free in her heart and mind to turn Hubert out and give him hell and know that at least he wasn’t starving. Mary was already on her way to meet Lauro, leaving the house by the back door. His white coat was hanging on the back of a kitchen chair. Mary swung down the hot winding path with her long brown legs and sandals and, seeing Lauro’s black head once more below her, called to him, ‘Lauro!’

He stopped and waited. She found him sitting down in the shade of the woods just off the path. ‘Lauro,’ she said, ‘I’ve got something important to ask you. I want you to do something.’

She expected him to stand up immediately she approached but he let a moment pass before doing so. He was smiling as if he enjoyed the lonely scene, and as if the woods belonged to him. She felt strangely awkward as she had not been before when she had been alone with him in the house or in the car, or walking with him to the shops in the village street.

She spoke rapidly, as if giving some domestic instructions while her free mind, as it might be, was on something weightier. ‘You have to keep a secret, Lauro,’ she said. ‘I have something here for Mr Mallindaine but he must not be told who sent it.’

‘Okay,’ said Lauro.

‘I want you to take this box to Mr Mallindaine’s house. He mustn’t see you as he mustn’t know where the box has come from. Find some way of leaving it where he’s sure to find it. Do you know the lay-out of the house?’

‘Sure, I know the house well. I lived there all last summer. What’s in the box please, Mary?’

Mary opened it, trembling at what she was doing. ‘They’re old coins,’ she was saying. I’ve made a list.’ She displayed the rich tumble of gold with an expression which conveyed both her naïvety and the pleasure of showing off to the boy.

The sight of so much golden money in the rich, very rich, tall girl’s hands inflamed him instantly with sexual desire. He grabbed the box and pulled her into the thick green glade. He pulled her down to the ground and with the box spilling beside them he would have raped her had she not quite yielded after the first gasp, and really, in the end, although she protested in fierce whispers, her eyes all over the green shrubbery lest someone should see, she put up no sort of struggle. ‘That wasn’t no good because you didn’t relax,’ Lauro said, his face, satyr-like, closing in on hers, his eyes gleaming with automatic hypnotism as he had seen it done on the films and television from his tiniest years, and acquired as a habit.

Mary, in a crisis of breath-shortage and an abundance of tears, pulled at her few clothes and managed to articulate, ‘My husband will kill you.’

‘He sooner screw me,’ Lauro said.

‘That, too, I’ll tell him,’ she said. ‘I would hit you on the face if you were not a servant.’

He jumped up; flash and flutter went his eyes closing on her face, and tight went his hands on her bare arms, as if he were directing the film as well as playing the principal part. ‘Next time, you relax,’ Lauro said, smiling through his teeth. ‘For the first time, no good.’

Mary closed her mouth tight and pushed back her hair with a gesture of every-day indifference. He turned and took up the jewel-box whose contents were half-spilled on the earth, and with her help scooped up the lurking gold. He laughed as if the coins were some sort of counters in a party-game, while Mary, still trembling and crying, stood up; she tugged at her clothes and smoothed her hair; she said, ‘Give me that box.’

‘I’ll take it to Hubert,’ he said, and started off in that direction.

Mary caught up with him. ‘Are you sure you’ll find the right place to leave it? It’s not mine, it’s Maggie’s. Hubert mustn’t know.’

He smiled, and turned to put his face close to hers again, smiling. ‘Leave it to me, Mary,’ he said. He clutched the box under his arm as if it were a man’s business, and looked as if he had earned the takings within.

She turned and ran back to the house, not sure how far she was guilty, or what she must do next. She became uncertain whether Lauro could be trusted with those coins. She was perplexed about the relationship in which she stood with Lauro now, and above all she was anxious to take a shower.

Hubert was at that moment counting some coins which he had found in a curious way at six o’clock that afternoon.

Pauline had gone in to Rome in Hubert’s station-wagon, taking with her, wrapped in lengths and strips of sackcloth, a second Louis XIV chair of Maggie’s to be delivered to the address in Via di Santa Maria dell’Anima where the copies were made. Of these transactions Pauline knew nothing, thinking only that the chairs were being examined and repaired, and that the bill for this service would be sent to their mysterious all-pervasive owner, Maggie. Pauline had never seen Maggie; to Pauline she was a hovering name, an absent presence in Hubert’s house and his life.

She delivered the chair, with its penitential sackcloth secured by a winding string round its beautiful legs and tied over its seat and back, ordering the man who carried it up the stairs to take care, great care. She left it with him while she went to find a legitimate parking place for the car. When she returned the man was with a younger man, tall, in blue jeans and a smart shirt; the chair had already been unshrouded and they were examining it with pride.

As Pauline approached the younger man disappeared into a back room from where he carried a chair identical in appearance to the one Pauline had brought. She had been instructed to fetch this back to the house; apparently it was the first of Maggie’s best chairs to be sent for inspection and overhaul and, apparently, it was now in perfect order. In reality, it was a new and very clever fake; one of its legs was all that remained of Maggie’s former chair. Most of these clever fakes contained at least one limb of the original, and in that way the dealer was entitled, or felt entitled, to proclaim it ‘Louis XIV’. To Pauline, it did not matter very much what period the chair belonged to. She had her orders to collect it and she was anxious to get back to Hubert quickly. She asked the men to wrap the chair carefully, which they duly did, with new rags, and much wadding placed over the sparkling green silk of the seat. It was carried to the car.

‘Tell Mr Mallindaine to pass by early next week,’ said the smart young man in blue jeans.

‘He isn’t leaving Nemi much, at the moment,’ Pauline said, thinking of Hubert, how he was afraid to leave the house in case Maggie should come and reclaim it in his absence.

But the man repeated his request.

Meantime Hubert, at Nemi, was counting the gold coins he had found at six o’clock. It was his usual tea time and he had gone into the kitchen to make it. As he had fetched down the teapot from the shelf he heard a strange rattling inside it. He took off the lid. He had found a quantity of gold money inside the pot.

He sat down at the kitchen table, looking inside the teapot. Then he looked round the kitchen to see what else, if anything, was amiss. Nothing seemed to be out of place. He wished for Pauline to return. He had emptied the gold coins on the table, and now was counting them.

There were, in fact, far fewer than the amount entrusted to Lauro who had kept the black box and more than half the gold. Indeed, his sense of prudence in carrying out Mary’s orders was mixed with a feeling of decided benevolence that he had deposited any of these coins in Hubert’s teapot. It had sunk into his mind that Mary had told him she had made a list of the coins. It had seemed to him both a fruitless thing to do and a suspicious thing, as touching on his honour.

By the time Hubert, at his customary hour for tea, was puzzling over and re-counting the coins, Lauro was back at the Radcliffes’ house, and had changed into his smart houseman’s coat. He filled the ice-buckets, arranged the drinks and the glasses, set the terrace furniture to rights, then, chatting with the cook in the pantry, he waited for the cocktail hour.

On her return to the house, after her careful shower and before going down to dinner, Mary had sat for a long while in her room, with her head in her hands, thinking God knows what. Then she skipped to her feet and changed into a long skirt and a blouse. She took up her list of coins, where it was lying on the writing table, and put it down again. She sat down at the table, and pulled out another piece of her list paper. At the top of the page she wrote ‘Michael’ and underneath it she wrote ‘Lauro’. She settled for the thought that she could not have been faithful to Michael all her life, but she felt it was too soon because a year had not passed since her marriage. But then she considered how she had not herself planned the incident with Lauro. One way and another, she tidied up her mind, aligned the beauty preparations in their bottles on the dressing table, and put away the paper she had just written Lauro’s name on with Michael’s together with the coin-list, her guest-lists and her other lists, locking them up in her desk. Mary had then patted her face with a paper tissue, and had gone down, passing Michael, home from the office, on the stairs. Maggie was already sitting on the terrace waiting for her husband to arrive and her son to come down. Lauro came forward to hover till they were ready to say what they wanted to drink.

‘Oh, Lauro,’ Mary said very uppishly, ‘did you remember that errand?’

‘Yes, Mary,’ he said in his usual friendly tone, ‘how could I forget?’

Mary turned to Maggie and said in a decidedly natural voice, ‘He’s delivered the box. You see, Lauro knows the house so well, I sent it by him.’

‘Oh!’ said Maggie. ‘But then Hubert will know where it came from and who sent it, and—’

‘He didn’t see me,’ Lauro said. ‘I got in through the bathroom window while he was sleeping upstairs. I put the box beside the teapot, so when he came to make his tea he’d be sure to find it.’

‘That’s brilliant. Lauro, you’re brilliant,’ Maggie said. ‘Mary, darling, you’re brilliant. I feel so much relieved now he’s at least not likely to starve, because you know I have to get him out of the house. How I’ve been in the past to Hubert is no guide to how I shall be in the future.’

‘Get the police and have him thrown out,’ said Mary rather impatiently. ‘Lauro, a Campari-soda, please.’

‘Well, in our position we can’t have a scandal. You know what the Italian papers are like, and all those Communists,’ Maggie said.

“We do it discreet,’ Lauro said.

‘That’s right, Lauro. A gin and tonic. Lauro’s got the right ideas. Lauro, you’re brilliant.’

Hubert, meanwhile, having counted the coins and made his tea, taking it outside on the handsome terrace, gazed out on the panoramic view and pondered. He then began an inspection of the house and decided that one of the ground-floor windows had been entered. There was a narrow pantry window and a narrow bathroom window. The bathroom window was open. It had not been forced. He decided to put bars on the ground-floor windows. He went on a tour of the whole house, opening drawers and cupboards. Nothing was disarranged, nothing missing; it seemed to Hubert that his burglar had been motivated by sheer benevolence towards him. It was a pity to have to bar the windows. Nothing could have been more clearly intended as a personal and rather touching present than those golden coins in his own teapot. For the first time for nearly a year, Hubert started to feel, singing within him, innocence and happiness.