Mimi's Ghost Page 11

  ‘What?’

  ‘Really I should have been off duty half an hour ago.’

  ‘Then where’s the other nurse? The day nurse.’

  The dark little girl shrugged her shoulders. Her replacement hadn’t come. Morris realised with a faint sense of weariness that on hearing the news of Signora Trevisan’s death, the first thing one of his well-to-do in-laws must have done was to decide what economies could be made. Reaching his hand in his jacket, the more magnanimous Morris pulled out his wallet, found a hundred-thousand-lire note and pushed it into the girl’s hand.

  ‘With my gratitude,’ he said gallantly, ‘for all you have done for the family,’ and he hurried off downstairs. Already he could imagine Kwame in a tight white jacket, crossing the salotto with a bottle of champagne on a silver tray held high.

  The sewing box was an elaborate varnished wicker basket standing beside rubber plants and heavy antiques in the soggiorno. Inside , amazingly, amongst cotton-reels and an armoury of needles - some long and suggestively curved, others thin and brightly fragile - was a wodge of threadbare underclothes that needed patching and darning. Morris marvelled. This interminable thriftiness of the provincial prosperous! He would never get over it. Searching for the locket, he pulled out a girdle on its very last legs (as it were), elastic parting company with cotton, then a pair of dull pink panties sad with years of service and irretrievably crotch-stained, a hole half sewn up with needle stowed sideways where the material doubled to absorb what it must, as if she’d been doing just this when the first stroke struck.

  Non fortuna sed labor indeed! But for what? He shook his head over an ample bra, the strap almost worn through, and was aware now of a curious sense of arousal. His hands lingered for amoment on the lifeless fabric - surely it couldn’t be less sexy. But it had to do with Mimi again, with the fact of her having slept so smooth and fragrantly young beside the sagging flesh of that elderly woman. He pushed a fist into one of the cups, knuckle for nipple, and stared, remembering how Mimi too had been dreadfully parsimonious those first days of their flight, until he had taught her how to spend. Then the first thing she had wanted to buy was new underwear, because her own was grey almost, and rough. Could it have been simply the luxury of new underwear that had finally made her decide to make love to him?

  Certainly Paola never skimped in that department.

  And now he was remembering the moment when he had packed up her clothes in the pensione in Rome, on the way to pick up the money, how he had wished he had time to try them on, at least her pants and bra, so as to savour somehow the difference between them, himself and Mimi, man and woman, what it must feel like to have a girl’s young body, the breasts, the crotch space . . .

  But he mustn’t let his mind wander like this, pleasurable as it might very well be. Morris rummaged. There was the locket: a small puff of gold on a broken chain. Good! He fiddled with the clasp, then drew a sharp breath. Paola hadn’t told him that along with the key there was a photograph of Massimina inside, tinily girlish, poignantly creased in a frame that was too small. ‘Mimi!’ Would it never end! Oh, for Christ’s sake! Banish these thoughts! Morris shivered, grabbed the key, then the underwear too, and thrust the both of them in his pocket.

  Yet the sense of her presence here in this house, this room, was overwhelming now. Her perfume too, the perfume she used to use. No! That was impossible! All at once his senses seemed to flood toward fullness, an alertness rising under such surprised pressure it bubbled over into confusion. The room was full of her perfume. His body knotted in tension, but trembling.

  Then her voice said: ‘Morrees?’

  He closed his eyes. His knees almost gave as he rose to his feet, ready to embrace her in any form. In any form. For he had always known this moment must come some day. When they would see each other again, when they would look each other in the eye and know each other in some new and deeper way. Turning slowly round, he found Antonella standing by the sofa behind him, a puzzled look on her face.

  How the hell had she got in with the door chained?

  For a moment he was a rabbit trapped in torchlight, frozen and desperately disappointed.

  ‘Morrees,’ his sister-in-law repeated. She was dressed in black, which oddly made her look rather smarter and younger than she usually managed. Morris pulled something of himself together.

  ‘Paola, er, she phoned me in the car. You know, I came to pay my respects. The nurse is upstairs. Oh, and she asked me to get this key. She, er, thought we should open the safety deposit box in case there were any papers that needed dealing with in a hurry.’

  He felt desperately squalid saying this. Certainly it was not part of the elegant, tasteful life he had meant to lead. Not to mention the discomfort of sweat trickling down the small of his back, between his buttocks. And could this really be the same perfume Mimi had used? Baruffa. Sweet and dirt cheap in a trite red box. Paola used Givenchy.

  Antonella stood there, perhaps two yards away, a stern puckering about her mouth, as though to show a child she was more sad than angry.

  Morris faltered: ‘We, we, er . . .’ How had the woman got in? Through garden gate and back door? This was unfair.

  Quite unexpectedly, Antonella took two steps, opened her arms, burst into tears, and embraced him. She sobbed and sobbed, so that for the first time Morris now had the third and eldest sister’s body pressed tight and trembling against his own.

  ‘Terribile, terribile!’ she was weeping. ‘It’s so awful. Povera Mamma, povera povera Mamma, I’11 feel so alone without her, so alone.’

  Morris held her, recovering a little of his confidence. And it was Baruffa! When Bobo could perfectly well have bought his wife a gallon of Chanel every day had he only had the class! Suddenly he felt deeply endeared to this woman, his sister-in-law, to the quality of her grief. He squeezed her shoulders reassuringly and his soft voice told her that perhaps this was all for the best. It was a miserable existence Mamma had been leading the last year or so.

  Antonella only wept the harder. Morris could see no way he might in all decency go and check the writing desk in the next room. However, what mattered was that he was here in case anybody else tried to check it.

  ‘It reminds me,’ he said, tucking her face into his neck, ‘of when I lost my own mother.’ Rather unwisely he added: ‘I felt so angry with the world.’

  Antonella was calming down. She detached herself, fumbling for a handkerchief in her sleeve.

  ‘Why angry?’ she asked.

  Of course it wasn’t a real request for information, more part of the process of moving from tears to snuffles, from outburst to self-control. There was no need for him to answer. All the same, and perhaps to recover some of the dignity he felt he had lost in being caught rummaging for safety-deposit-box keys the moment the head of the household expired, Morris responded truthfully: ‘Because it seemed so unfair to take away the person who mattered most to me and brought out the best in me.’

  Even more unwisely, he added, and there was a catch in his voice now: ‘Like when Massimina died.’

  Antonella looked up. There was a soft spark of recognition in her eyes, of appreciation. ‘Sei molto dolce, Morrees, she said quietly. ‘Very sweet. I’m so glad you are here. Bobo said he couldn’t come for a while. He says he has a problem at the office, but it’s so mean of him, I think. I was just dreading having to see her on my own.’ She wiped her tears. ‘Will you come up with me?’

  Taking her arm as they crossed to the stairs and getting another wave of her perfume, Morris once again sensed his old lover’s presence. It was almost as if the girl were breathing lightly on his neck from behind as they walked. He felt full of emotion and tenderness, yet it was precisely this intensity which gave him the presence in another part of his mind to remark: ‘I suppose Bobo is responsible for getting in touch with the lawyer about the will and so on.’

  ‘The will?’ Antonella asked.

  ‘I’m thinking of the company,’ Morris lied. And invented: �
�I think we’re legally obliged to register change of ownership within a certain time.’

  ‘The will?’ Antonella repeated. She was clutching his arm very tightly as they turned the corner of the stairs and approached the bedroom. ‘Don’t worry, Bobo’s got it in the safe at home. He’ll sort it out.’

  ‘Bene,’ Morris said. And was furious. Why hadn’t Paola known this? How careless! How ingenuous! And how could this charitable, right-feeling, sensitive woman be so incredibly blinkered as not to see through the machinations of her uncharitable, insensitve, wrong-feeling husband! It was unforgivable! As it was unforgivable in the end that his own mother had married his father. How could it have led to anything but disaster? Himself. His useless, pitiable, beaten self! He could have smashed the plaster Madonna on the window-ledge at the turn of the stairs to smithereens. These stupid, inappropriate images of piety! When the truth was that Bobo had no doubt walked off with everything!

  ‘Grazie,’ Antonella whispered. She had interpreted the involuntary tightening of his arm around her as his caring response to her trepidation. ‘Grazie, Motrees.’

  Leaving all self-respect behind (and they were right by the door now) he asked bluntly: ‘I presume everything was left equally to both daughters.’

  But Antonella, at the thought of what she was about to have come home to her, was beginning to cry. Morris reached out for the handle, pushed the door and repeated quite brutally: ‘I presume she left everything equally to both daughters. Vero?’

  Antonella looked at him through-tears with alarm in her eyes. She seemed to be having difficulty even focusing on his face, never mind understanding what his lips had uttered.

  ‘Equally? Ma sì!’ she finally said. Si, certo. Mamma never showed any favouritism to any of us.’ Turning away, she burst into tears again. For the door had swung open, revealing, as they walked in, the old woman’s now ghoulish profile, nose unnaturally prominent as if thrust upwards from the fast-sinking pallor of the cheeks, mouth still agape. The effect was of something at once malign and pathetic. ‘Mamma!’Antonella wailed, and covered her face with her hands. ‘O Mamma, cara!’ The nurse turned respectfully away. Morris soothed his sister-in-law with gentle arms and soft voice, elated.

  14

  Walking down to the square, Morris Duckworth could have hugged the old peasant still offloading his wood into the cellar window half an hour on. Oh, this Wedgwood-blue sky, these sharp, sharp horizons of cypresses and campanili, the silver green of the olives and rose pastel of pitted stucco! Italy, oh Italy! Tiled red roofs and Roman walls higgledy-piggledy in a sparkling Ferrarelle distance! He stopped and breathed deeply. In a yard below the curving road a shawled woman swept at cobble-stones with a twig broom while hens clucked about her. ‘Buon giorno!’ Morris shouted down. ‘Buon giorno!’ he called to a felt-hatted relic of the peasantry fighting his way up the hill with a stick, dead cigar clamped between wrinkled lips. A dog barked, joyfully it seemed despite its chain, and the bus down in the piazza honked gaily to announce imminent service. Upon which sharp and sudden sound, a cloud of sparrows rose from intertwined persimmon trees. Orange fruit quivered against shiny black bark. Then smells of wood smoke on the breeze. Yes, God is in His heaven, Morris thought, and all is right with the world.

  Or rather, Morris was in his heaven. Or Morris was God? In the sense that he was in everything and everything was in him: the delicious wood smoke, the grimly wholesome faces of the peasant folk, the winter tracery of the vines, the pitted road. In everything and accepted by it, as he reciprocally accepted everything. Wholly himself, exactly as he overflowed and emptied into everything else. Rich now and thus free to be happy and generous, a rightful heir to the wide world’s abundance.

  ‘Mimi?’ As soon as he was in the car, he lifted the phone again, and the number to dial for her, he suddenly decided, was 321 for the circles of the Inferno backwards, then 789 for the slow prosaic ascent of purgatory, and at last a single zero, which was the mystical shape of perfection, of the crown that excludes everything profane - the garland of a soul in paradise. And the shape of a kiss too, her full lips forming a perfect round.

  ‘Mimi, yes,’ he got through almost at once, ‘no, sorry, I’ll have to be dreadfully brief. I just wanted to say thank you. I mean, I know you’ve been helping me. I know I owe this to you, this inheritance, your inheritance. I want to promise that the money, your money, will be used to help others, to make other people’s lives that much happier. I know it is your sign that I must stay with Paola and the company, to point them in the right direction. Thank you, Mimi, thank you.’

  Morris shifted on the white leather seat in the stationary car, smiled indulgently at loud adolescents reading La Gazzetta dello Sport at tables outside the bar, buzzed down the window to let in some fresh air, then dialled again: the more arbitrary code for England this time.

  ‘Dad? Yes, Dad, it’s me.’

  There was the problem with this call, of course, that the old man could and no doubt would answer back, that one couldn’t, as it were, simply deliver the fait accompli of one’s message and escape untainted.

  ‘Me, Morris!’

  There was a sharp groan. ‘Christ, what time is it? Do you realise what bloody time it is?’ Morris had forgotten the hour’s difference. Still, it was eight-thirty here. He said contritely: ‘I thought you were an early riser. Dad. I wanted to catch you before you were up and out.’

  There was a fairly long and, at cellular-phone rates, decidedly expensive silence. ‘God, Christ, no, heavy night on the boozer, you know. Bugger me, what a razzle!’

  Behind the exaggerated tones of morning-after suffering, Morris immediately picked up the bragging subtext: Here I am still living a real man’s life, even in retirement, which is more than my wimp of a son ever managed. But rather than irritating, let alone humilating him, as it might have in the past, the mature Morris found his father’s misplaced bravado almost endearing. The way one might be endeared to a dog’s wagging pride at having stupidly retrieved a flung stick from filth.

  ‘Dad,’ he said, at his most demurely respectful. ‘I just wanted to say that Paola and I will shortly be moving into a rather larger, er, residence, so if you’d like to come and visit in, say, a month or two, please do feel free.’

  Sipping whisky on the wistaria-draped terrace of Casa Trevisan, it would be somewhat difficult for old Mr D to continue to think of his son as a failure.

  Nothing. The radio connection crackled.

  ‘Meantime’ - for some reason Morris’s accent always moved sharply up-market when he talked to his father, as if in necessary compensation - ‘meantime, if your pension should need topping up at some point, please don’t feel ashamed to ask.’

  When his father was still silent, Morris added: ‘I was saying to Paola only the other day, I think you’ve worked hard enough in your life to deserve a comfortable retirement.’

  ‘Oh, bloody Christ!’ his father immediately objected. ‘Aren’t we la-di-da!’

  Morris reflected that the man’s expletives had never been anything but repetitive. Even in his coarseness there had never been anything to admire. Perhaps that was where he and Paola parted company.

  ‘Beg pardon?’ he asked. Pretty well hamming it now. Riding the crest.

  Another expensive crackle, unless the man was belching.

  ‘I’ve said it before’ - his father now sucked in catarrh - ‘and I’ll say it again: it was the ruin of you when your mother wouldn’t have it any other way but to call you Morris. The ruin. I could never take a person seriously that got himself called Morris.’

  How remorselessly his father always played on this imagined transfer of femininity from mother to son! Morris, however, had skin scaly centimetres thick against this kind of assault now. He fingered the satisfyingly bulbed head of the gear stick and waggled it affectionately, in complete control.

  ‘Well, Dad, the invitation is quite serious, I can assure you, and ditto the offer of funds if you should find yourself in a spot o
f difficulty. I just wouldn’t like you to think,’ he added quickly, ‘that your son had, er, abandoned you in your old age.’ Then before his father could object to this nail so elegantly whammed into his coffin, Morris finished: ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to your aspirins and raw eggs now. ‘I’ve got a pretty busy day ahead of me here.’ With fingertip pressure on a delightfully oval button, violet against the subtly contoured whiteness of the receiver, he cut his father off, sent him plunging back down into the outer darkness of east Acton, surely at least the second circle, if not worse.

  Then the phone began to ring, or rather trill. Morris looked at it, but decided that Paola perhaps deserved to wait a little longer for the good news. He got out of the car and, jingling various important keys in his pocket, sauntered over to the bar, sat at a table beneath the pergola and, doing his best to ignore the dying soldier in grimy mosaic across the piazza, ordered a cappuccino and brioche.

  ‘Sprinkling of cocoa on top, per favore.’

  Quite pixily pretty, the waitress, he thought, despite a down-market tightness of the skirt on plump thighs. Nice. And there was something most voluptuous about deliberately wasting time like this when he should have been rushing off to tackle Bobo over this firing business. Bobo, who hadn’t even had the good grace to go and pay his prompt respects to his dead mother-in-law. Well! Mmm. Morris savoured time’s passing to the taste of sweet coffee in his mouth. With any luck the boy would actually be intimidated by the unexpected delay, for he must be expecting his brother-in-law to rush out there in a rage.

  The brioche had apricot marmalade inside, which was pleasant enough. Morris politely had himself passed the local paper. He decided he would not think about his acned in-law at all. No, he wouldn’t plan any strategy or even remotely speculate on the coincidence of this unpleasantness of Bobo’s firing his boys, his family, cropping up the very night Signora Trevisan had died, the very night after their little dinner party. Because he was home and dry now, co-heir, through Paola, of the whole estate, on absolutely equal terms. If the government had had to devalue the lira again, as the newspaper’s headlines made plain, then who gave a tinker’s curse (not to stoop to his father’s language)? Who gave a beggar’s tithe (that was good)? Because exports to Doorways (prices quoted in sterling) would only be all the more profitable. Indeed, Italy might well be witnessing the birth of a great new commercial empire. The truth was that every magnate played hard and fast to begin with, then little by little became respectable as wealth snowballed and culture followed in its wake.