This Rough Magic (6 page)

‘I suppose so.’

She turned to me. ‘You said this morning that you wondered why he disappeared like that after he’d retired. You knew about the car smash three or four years ago, when his wife and daughter were killed?’

‘Oh, lord, yes. It happened just the week before he opened in
Tiger Tiger
. I saw it after it had been running about a month. Lucky for him it was a part to tear a cat in, so he was better than ever, if possible, but he’d lost a couple of stones’ weight. I know he was ill after he left the cast, and rumours started going round then that he was planning to retire, but of course nobody really believed them, and he seemed quite all right for the Stratford season; then they suddenly announced
The Tempest
as his last appearance. What happened, then? Was he ill again after that came off?’

‘In a way. He finished up in a nursing home with a nervous breakdown, and he was there over a year.’

I stared at her, deeply shocked. ‘I never knew that.’

‘Nobody knew,’ said my sister. ‘It’s not the sort of thing one advertises, especially if one’s a public person like Julian Gale. I only knew myself because Max Gale said something to Leo when they rented the house, and then a friend of mine told me the rest. He’s supposed to be better, and he does go out sometimes to visit friends, but there’s always someone with him.’

I said flatly: ‘You mean he has to be watched? You’re trying to tell me that Julian Gale is—’ I paused. Why
were all the words so awful? If they didn’t conjure up grotesque images of Bedlam, they were even worse, genteel synonyms for the most tragic sickness of all. ‘–Unbalanced?’ I finished.

‘I don’t know!’ Phyllida looked distressed. ‘Heaven knows one doesn’t want to make too much of it, and the very fact that he was discharged – if that’s the word – from the home must mean that he’s all right, surely?’

‘But he
must
be all right! Anyway, you said you’d met him. How did he seem then?’

‘Perfectly normal. In fact, I fell for him like a ton of bricks. He’s very charming.’ She looked worriedly across at Godfrey. ‘But I suppose these things can recur? I never thought … the idea wasn’t even raised … but if I’d thought, with the children coming here for their holidays and everything—’

‘Look,’ said Godfrey briskly, ‘you’re making altogether too much of this, you know. The very mention of a gun seems to have blown everything up right out of proportion. The man’s not a homicidal maniac or anything like it – and never has been, or he wouldn’t be here at all.’

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. Silly of me to panic.’ She gave a sigh, and subsided in her chair. ‘In any case Lucy probably dreamed it! If she never even
saw
a gun, and never heard it, either … ! Oh, well, let’s forget it, shall we?’

I didn’t trouble to insist. It no longer mattered. What I had just learned was too fresh and too distressing. I said miserably: ‘I wish I’d been a bit nicer to Mr Gale,
that’s all. He must have had a foul time. It’s bad enough for other people, but for his son—’

‘Oh, honey, don’t look so stricken!’ Phyl, her worry apparently gone, was back in the role of comforter. ‘We’re all probably
quite
wrong, and there’s nothing the matter at all, except that the old man needs a bit of peace and quiet to recuperate in, and Max is seeing he gets it! If it comes to that, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Max who insists on the quarantine for his own sake; he’s writing the score for some film or other, so the story goes, and
he
never appears at all. Hence all the “trespassers will be shot” stuff, and young Adonis playing bodyguard.’

‘Young
who
?’

‘Adonis. The gardener.’

‘Good heavens! Can anyone get away with a name like that, even in Greece?’

She laughed. ‘Oh, he does, believe you me!’

She turned to Godfrey then, saying something about Adonis, who had apparently been a close friend of Spiro’s. I caught Miranda’s name again, and something about a dowry, and difficulties now that the brother was dead; but I wasn’t really listening. I was still caught up unhappily in the news I had just heard. We do not take easily to the displacing of our idols. It was like making a long and difficult journey to see Michelangelo’s David, and finding nothing there but a broken pedestal.

I found I was reliving, as clearly as if it had been yesterday, that ‘last appearance’ in
The Tempest
; the gentle, disciplined verses resigning Prospero’s dark
powers, and with them, if this story were true, so much more:

‘…
This rough magic
I here abjure: and when I have requir’d
Some heavenly music (which even now I do)
To work mine end upon their senses, that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book
…’

I stirred in my chair, pushed my own distress aside with an effort of will, and came back to the
salotto
, where Godfrey Manning was taking his leave.

‘I’d better go. I meant to ask you, Phyl, when’s Leo coming over?’

‘He may manage this next weekend, I’m not sure. But definitely for Easter, with the children. D’you have to go? Stay to lunch if you like. Maria’s done the vegetables, thank goodness – how I hate potatoes in the raw! – and the rest’s cold. Won’t you stay?’

‘I’d like to, but I want to get back to the telephone. There may be news.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. You’ll phone me straight away if you hear anything, won’t you?’

‘Certainly.’ He picked up the portfolio. ‘Let me know as soon as you think Maria would like to see me.’

He said his goodbyes, and went. We sat in silence till the engine of his car faded among the trees.

‘Well,’ said my sister, ‘I suppose we’d better find something to eat. Poor Godfrey, he’s taking it hard. A
bit surprising, really, I never thought he’d be knocked endways quite like that. He must have been fonder of Spiro than he cares to admit.’

‘Phyl,’ I said abruptly.

‘Mm?’

‘Was that true, or was it just another of your stories, when you said Julian Gale was probably Miranda’s father?’

She looked at me sideways. ‘Well … Oh, damn it, Lucy, you don’t have to take everything quite so literally! Heaven knows – but there’s
something
in it, only I don’t know what. He christened the girl ‘Miranda’, and can you imagine any Corfiote hatching up a name like that? And then Maria’s husband deserted them. What’s more, I’ll swear Julian Gale’s been supporting the family. Maria’s never said a word, but Miranda’s let things drop once or twice, and I’m sure he does. And why, tell me that? Not just because he happened to know the husband during the war!’

‘Then if Miranda and Spiro were twins, he’s Spiro’s father, too?’

‘The facts of life being what they are, you might even be right. Oh!’ She went rigid in her chair, and turned large eyes on me. ‘You mean – you mean someone ought to go and break the news to
him
?’ All at once she looked very uncertain and flustered. ‘But, Lucy, it’s only a rumour, and one could hardly
assume
it, could one? I mean, think if one went over there, and—’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ I said. ‘In any case, it’s not our job to tell him, Maria’ll tell him herself. He’ll hear soon
enough. Forget it. Where’s this lunch you were talking about? I’m starving.’

As I followed her out to the kitchen, I was reflecting that Julian Gale had almost certainly had the news already. From my chair facing the
salotto
windows, I had seen Maria and her daughter leave the house together. And not by the drive that would take them back to their own cottage. They had taken the little path that Miranda had showed me that morning, the path that led only to the empty bay, or to the Castello dei Fiori.

He is drown’d

Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks
Our frustrate search on land: well, let him go
.

III
. 3.

D
AYS
went by, peaceful, lovely days. I kept my word, and went down daily to the bay. Sometimes the dolphin came, though never near enough for me to touch him, and, although I knew that for the animal’s own sake I ought to try to frighten him and drive him away, his friendly presence delighted me so much that I couldn’t bring myself to what would seem an act of betrayal.

I did keep a wary eye on the Castello terrace, but there was no further shooting incident, nor had there been any rumour that a local man might have been trespassing with a rifle. But I swam every day, and watched, and never left the bay until the dolphin had finally submerged and headed for the open sea.

There had been no news of Spiro. Maria and her daughter had come back to the Villa Forli the morning after the boy’s death, and had gone stoically on with their work. Miranda had lost the plump brightness that
characterised her; she looked as if she cried a lot, and her voice and movements were subdued. I saw little of Maria, who kept mostly to the kitchen, going silently about her work with the black head-kerchief pulled across her face.

The weather was brilliant, and hot even in the shade. Phyllida was rather listless. Once or twice she went with me on my sightseeing trips, or into the town of Corfu, and one evening Godfrey Manning took us both to dine at the Corfu Palace Hotel, but on the whole the week slipped quietly by, while I bathed, and sat on the terrace with Phyllida, or took the little car and drove myself out in the afternoons to explore.

Leo, Phyllida’s husband, hadn’t managed to get away for the weekend, and Palm Sunday came without a visit from him. Phyllida had advised me to go into the town that morning to watch the Palm Sunday procession, which is one of the four occasions in the year when the island Saint, Spiridion, is brought out of the church where he lies the year round in a dim shrine all smoky with taper-light, and is carried through the streets in his golden palanquin. It is not an image of the Saint, but his actual mummified body which is carried in the procession, and this, somehow, makes him a very personal and homely kind of patron saint to have: the islanders believe that he has Corfu and all its people in his personal and always benevolent care, and has nothing to do but concern himself deeply in all their affairs, however trivial – which may explain why, on the procession days, just about the whole population of the island crowds into the town to greet him.

‘What’s more,’ said my sister, ‘it’s a
pretty
procession, not just a gaggle of top brass. And St Spiro’s golden chair is beautiful; you can see his face quite clearly through the glass. You’d think it would be creepy, but it’s not, not a bit. He’s so tiny, and so … well, he’s a sort of
cosy
saint!’ She laughed. ‘If you stay long in Corfu you’ll begin to get the feeling you know him personally. He’s pretty well in charge of the island, you know, looks after the fishing, raises the wind, watches the weather for the crops, brings your boys safe home from sea …’ She stopped, then sighed. ‘Poor Maria. I wonder if she’ll go today? She doesn’t usually miss it.’

‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Are you sure you won’t come with me?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ll stay at home. You have to stand about for rather a long time while the procession goes past, and there’ll be a bit of a crush. Caliban and I take up too much room. Home for lunch? Good. Well, enjoy yourself.’

The little town of Corfu was packed with a holiday crowd, and the air was loud with bells. Caught up in the river of people which flowed through the narrow streets, I wandered happily along under the sound of the bells, which competed with the subdued roar of voices, and the occasional bursts of raucous brass from some upper window, where a village band was struggling with some last-minute practice. Shops were open, selling food and sweets and toys, their windows crammed with scarlet eggs ready for Easter, cockerels, dolls, baskets of tiny crystallised oranges, or enormous
rabbits laden with Easter eggs. Someone tried to sell me a sponge the size of a football, and someone else to convince me that I must need a string of onions and a red plush donkey, but I managed to stay unburdened, and presently found my way to the Esplanade, which is Corfu’s main square. Here the pavements were already packed, but when I tried to take my place at the back, the peasants – who must have come into town in the early morning, and waited hours for their places – made way for me with insistent gestures, almost forcing me forward into the place of honour.

Presently, from somewhere, a big bell struck, and there came the distant sound of the bands starting up. The vast crowd fell almost silent, all eyes turned to watch the narrow mouth of Nikephoros Street, where the first banners glinted, slowly moving up into the sunlight of the square. The procession had begun.

I am not sure what I had expected – a spectacle at once quaint and interesting, because ‘foreign’ – something to take photographs of, and then forget, till you got them out to look at, some evening at home. In fact, I found it very moving.

The bands – there were four of them, all gorgeously uniformed – played solemnly and rather badly, each a different tune. The village banners with their pious legends were crudely painted, enormous, and cruelly heavy, so that the men carrying them sweated and trembled under the weight, and the faces of the boys helping them wore expressions of fierce and dedicated gravity. There were variations in the uniforms of the school-children that were distinctly unconventional,
but the standard of personal beauty was so high that one hardly noticed the shabby coats of the boys, or the cheap shoes the girls wore; and the young servicemen in their reach-me-down uniforms, with their noticeable absence of pipeclay and their ragged timing, had still about them, visibly, the glamour of two Thermopylaes.

And there was never a moment’s doubt that all this was done in honour of the Saint. Crowded along the pavements in the heat, the people watched in silence, neither moving nor pushing. There were no police, as there would have had to be in Athens: this was their own Spiridion, their island’s patron, come out into the sunlight to bless them.