The Takeover (8 page)

He spread out the coins on the terrace table in the late bright sunlight: Queen Victoria still with a firm young profile and high curly bun, on the coin which was dated 1880 although she was born in 1819. St George and the Dragon, 1892, whose Queen Victoria on the reverse had now been minted with an incipient extra chin, a little coronet and a veil. Gulielmus IIII D: G: Britanniar: Rex F: D:, drooping jowls, a thick neck, a curly quiff on top of his head, 1837. Who, thought Hubert, adores me enough to send me all this glittering mint? And here’s Nero wearing a laurel wreath tied with a pretty ribbon at the nape of his neck, or, rather, it’s Georgius IIII D: G: Britanniar: Rex F: D: 1830. And now, Sub . Hoc . Signo . Militamus—a Knights of Malta ten scudi, 1961. Another juicy young Victoria D: G: Britanniar: Reg: F: D: darling Victoria, 1880, and that poor downtrodden dragon on the reverse. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and I wonder, thought Hubert, what utterly charming gentleman hath rendered these things unto me? It then occurred to Hubert that the actual bearer of the coins was hardly likely to be the sender. Hubert had instantly formed an image of largeness, if only of heart, for the sender; he was certainly rich, anyway, and would most likely have young men at his beck and call. Only a young man and slim could have got through the bathroom window so silently and softly. Then, it was someone who knew Hubert’s habits and who knew the house. Someone rich. Who? He scooped up the many dozens of coins and took them into the kitchen, where he spread them out and looked at them again.

Pauline returned with the fake chair which they placed in the drawing-room and admired. ‘He wants you to call in and see him. Better go soon,’ Pauline said. ‘I hope it isn’t about the bill.’

‘I hope not,’ Hubert said. ‘Maggie gets the bills for this servicing of her stuff. However, if you’ll hold the fort I’ll go and see him very soon. Always hold the fort. Let no one into the house. I’m thinking of getting bars put in these lower back windows as it seems to me someone might easily get in that way. Once they’re in, they can take possession of the house and we’re done for.’

It was in any case his intention to call on the furniture restorers and collect payment for the genuine parts of Louis XIV. It would be a considerable sum. Hubert looked at Pauline in a kind of dream, wondering how he could explain to her the good supply of drinks and food he intended to bring back from Rome with him. She had brought back a chicken and some meat and wine from Rome, the good girl; she had spent her own money and was about to prepare a special supper.

After a glass of wine he was moved to tell her about the gold coins.

‘It’s my opinion,’ he said, ‘that the spirit of my ancestors Caligula and Diana are responsible for this.’ He gave Pauline two sovereigns.

She accepted them after a little hesitation. ‘They could have been stolen,’ she had said.

‘Well,
we
didn’t steal them. They were in my teapot, so they’re plainly mine. My dear, they are our crock of gold and we have come to the end of the rainbow.’

‘Someone must have got into the house.’

‘Through the bathroom window,’ Hubert said. ‘So tomorrow we arrange to have the windows barred.’

‘Then your ancestors won’t be able to come again,’ Pauline said, looking at her sovereigns.

‘Those are not on account of wages,’ said Hubert. ‘Wages I’ll pay later and in good measure. I don’t like that touch of scepticism in your voice. Remember that my ancestor Diana is very much alive and she doesn’t like being mocked. But of course if you’re going to express doubts and behave like a French village atheist—’

‘It could have been one of those boys who worked for you last summer,’ Pauline said, looking at the pile of gold on the table and touching the coins tentatively from time to time.

‘Not on your life,’ said Hubert.

‘It’s someone who wants to help you,’ Pauline said. ‘A well-wisher. Why didn’t they send you a cheque?’

Hubert found himself suddenly irritated by this speech. Her kindergarten teacher’s tone, he thought. All this being penniless, he thought, has lowered my standards. I should have better company, witty, good minds around me. I find a pile of sovereigns in the teapot and all the silly bitch can say is, ‘Someone wants to help you. Why didn’t they send a cheque?’

He took up the newspapers and weeklies she had brought in with her, and, leaving the gold coins littering the kitchen table, went off to his study to take a couple of tranquillizers and further hypnotize himself with the current American government scandals of which everyone’s latent anarchism drank deep that summer.

Lauro left for Rome very early next morning with his list of shopping at the supermarket. His first stop, however, was at one of the little cave-like shops in the village, filled, as they were, with the richest of fruits, plants and cut flowers. It was perhaps unusual, but not noticeably so, that he locked the car when he left it outside the door on the village street. Lauro went in and waited his turn.

Figs, peaches, strawberries, all so local and proudly selected, there was not one inferior fruit to be seen. The flowers were mainly of the aster family, huge, medium-sized and smallish, in white, yellow, mauve and pink. Among them were some deeply coloured small roses and a variety of ferns and leafy plants. The woman who was serving and she who had just been served looked at Lauro with the look of curiosity which comes over the faces of people to whom nothing much happens, and which, to people of more elaborate lives, looks like hostility. The Radcliffes had their own orchards and rarely shopped here. However, the local people knew very well who Lauro was, and of his recent transference from Hubert’s mysterious home to Mary Radcliffe’s spectacularly rich one. Lauro, in his smart clothes, the transparent beige shirt and fine-striped pink trousers, was to be treated with a touch of deference. What would he desire? Grapes, peaches fresh this morning, fine tomatoes…?

Lauro desired some plants, strong and lasting, with the roots, for transplanting.

What type of plants? What did the gardeners at the Radcliffes’ advise?

‘Oh, no,’ Lauro said, rather impatiently, almost as if to suggest that not any roots, not any plants, would do, ‘they’re for my mother’s grave. I’m going to visit her at the cemetery.’

The woman who had been served, although she had received her change, made no sign of leaving, but entered the discussion. Surely the Radcliffes had plenty of plants and to spare…?

‘For Mama,’ said Lauro with a haughty masculine bark that sent the women scurrying, ‘I prefer to pay.’ And he bought four chrysanthemum plants not yet in flower and rattled his money while they were being carefully wrapped in newspaper and placed in an orange-coloured plastic shopping bag. He left, and was watched to his car. It was only when he was seen to unlock the empty car, there on the harmless street, that he looked behind him and saw the two women exchanging glances. Carefully, he spat on the pavement. Then he got into his car and drove away too fast. Suspicious old fat cows, what did it matter if they knew what he might be up to, and he knew that they knew that he knew, since, if he put his mind to it he could easily make as many accurate guesses about their doings as they about his. It was for this reason that he had not even bothered to take the precaution of buying his plants in Rome: in Rome they were twice the price, whereas in Nemi they were cheap and he didn’t need to care what the people thought. So ended one of those telepathic encounters that go on all the time among compatriots who have foreigners in their midst.

Arriving in Rome, Lauro made first for the cemetery. He found his mother’s grave, well-tended and neat, with its hovering marble angel and the little inset photograph. There was room here for his father; their five children would later buy their own burial-plots in the new cemetery, since this one would then be fully occupied. ‘Cara Mama,’ said Lauro. He had brought his packages in the bright orange plastic shopping bag from the car. He had unpacked the healthy plant-roots, the little strong trowel and another newspaper-wrapped package containing the black leather box with most of the coins that Mary had given over to him the afternoon before.

Some people passed, old people on the way to visit their dead. They gave Lauro a muted ‘Buon giorno’, inclining their heads towards him with approving piety. Lauro, on his knees, dutifully digging and tending his mother’s flower-bed, looked up and returned the greeting with wistful repetition, one quiet ‘Buon giorno’ for each of the three figures who passed. He was a nice boy in their eyes, which made him feel nice as he dug. The figures, a fat woman in black, a thin man and another, less fat woman with difficult-walking feet, passed from his life. When he had dug enough and laid on the grass verge some of the flowers and plants he had dislodged in the process, he opened up the sheets of newspaper which contained the black leather box. He had almost thrown away the box, keeping only the coins to bury, but it was such a well-made, a well-bred box, such as Lauro sometimes saw in the shops and boutiques of Rome, and it was so connected, now, with the desirable coins and the casual and exclusive quality of Mary and Maggie in their inherited wealthiness, that he had decided to bury the box along with the coins, despite the nuisance. He opened the box, lifted the paper-tissues which he had stuffed inside to keep the coins from rattling, sifted a few of the beautiful golden disks through his brown ringers, quickly replaced the lot, put the black box in the orange plastic bag for safe preservation and, seeing that it was well-covered, he buried it deep. On top of this he replaced some of the short shrubs he had dug up.

He began also to plant the new chrysanthemum roots he had brought, working his way around the grave and, tidying up the border, tastefully arranged the colours; there were already a few nasturtiums, some asters in pink and purple shades and some dark green shoots the nature of which would not be revealed till the autumn. While he was at it he dug up, examined, and replaced two well-wrapped little parcels, one containing a huge sapphire ring and the other a pair of monogrammed cuff-links, these being objects he had picked up somewhere along the line from two earlier periods and encounters of his young life.

When the grave was ready, Lauro stood up and looked at the picture of his mother whom he remembered as deserving and energetic. Her huge voice had commanded until she died. She looked out unsmiling with her bold eyes and her short hair shining and fresh from the hairdresser’s. The costly angel who spread his wings above her little oval picture looked frightened by comparison, and the downcast eyes of that pale, church-going, feathered adherent of the New-fangled Testament seemed shiftily afraid to meet those of the living Lauro.

Nobody except the family was permitted to touch the grave. Lauro had taken on this work exclusively to himself; the rest of the family, from whom, in any case, he had nothing to fear, were all too busy elsewhere to tend it. His father had married again and lived in Milan; his two sisters were married with children and lived in Turin. One brother was married in America, and the other, who lived with his father in Milan, was a student. Once a year at the beginning of November, on the Day of the Dead, those of the family and their spouses who were not in America or, as it might happen, confined in labour wards, came to visit Lauro’s mother at the cemetery, bearing with them large bunches of long-petalled white and yellow chrysanthemums. These would be piled on the grave. The family would hover and weep, some lustily, some merely wetly. They would say how nicely Lauro kept it, how good he was, sparing them the expense of the cemetery-attendant’s services. They kissed Mama’s picture but did not touch the grave and asked no questions, not even of themselves. They felt Lauro was getting on quite well and admired his clothes. After the visit to the cemetery on the Day of the Dead the family would troop out with the other thousands of ancestor-visitors, get into their cars and proceed to a trattoria where they had booked a long table for a five-course family meal. Once a year.

Lauro looked around the cemetery, now, in early August, nearly deserted. Only one or two heads moved behind one or two tombstones. Lauro wrapped the leafy rubbish in a piece of his newspaper and the trowel in another. An attendant passed and wished him good-morning. Lauro looked around with pleasure. What secrets lay buried in these small oblong territorial properties of the family dead!

D
EAR
H
UBERT,

We are leaving for Sardinia next week out of this frightful heat! I expect you too will have plans to go to the sea. After Sardinia I plan to return with Mary to the U.S. to spend some time on our own beautiful Atlantic beaches. Berto (my husband he looks forward to the pleasure of meeting you one day!) plans to join me on the Emerald Coast for a few weeks and then goes on to Le Touquet to join his brother. They plan to look over some horses he plans to buy. I plan to join him in Rome, then Nemi for a week on October first after which our plans take us back to the Veneto.

What I am writing about mainly is, if you can plan to vacate the house during the summer so that we can occupy it from October first, that would suit our plans. Will you let me know, please? Address your letter up till the end of August:

La Marchese Adalberto di Tullio-Friole,

Villa Stazzu,

Liscia di Vacca,

Costa Smeralda,

Sardegna.

After that my New York address (address me there Mrs Maggie Radcliffe as the apartment is still in my old name!) till the end of September. Please leave the key with Mary’s maid Agata, if you vacate in the month of August. Agata is coming in every day to feed the cat and dust. September, Lauro will be back so please leave the key with him if you have to vacate as late as the month of September. August would be preferable as this would enable me to plan for the decorators to come in from Rome in September so the house would be in shape for us.

A little bird told me you have been looking after my precious chairs! It was thoughtful of you and very, very simpatico. Bill me with the cost, of course. Maintenance is so very, very important.

One day when all the trivialities of life are settled I hope you will come and visit with me and Adalberto and tell us about your big project that you plan as I am sure you do. I hope it’s shaping up!

Happy summer!

As ever, love,

Maggie.