An Unsuitable Attachment (21 page)

Penelope was eating and drinking with a kind of stolid fatalism, feeling that she was destined to spend yet another evening with Basil. There was nothing she could do to make Rupert take any particular notice of her. He was talking almost entirely to Sophia and Ianthe, telling them about the conference in Perugia, which seemed to interest them. Rupert called for more wine, feeling that the evening was going well, and comparing it very favourably with those he had spent with the anthropologists. He was looking forward to being alone with Ianthe, who seemed to him to have gained in attractiveness since he last saw her, so that she now seemed to be rather more than just 'suitable'.

But plans do not always materialize in the anticipated way and somehow—perhaps by some subtle action of Sophia's (he would never know)—Rupert found himself alone with Penelope, the others having somehow got away before them.

Penelope sensed that he was surprised at the way things had turned out, and this feeling, together with the kind of desolation that much wine can sometimes bring, made her sulky and on the verge of tears. She had wanted to be alone with him but now that she was she knew that he would have preferred to be with Ianthe.

'I suppose we should get a taxi,' he said, feeling that he was being ineffectual and that no taxi would come. Had he been with Ianthe it would not have mattered and probably a taxi would have appeared immediately. A walk in the balmy Roman evening would be pleasant, he thought hopefully, but it was miles back to where they were staying and he had no idea where he was.

'Here's a taxi,' said Penelope. 'Should we take it?'

'Oh, yes—by all means.'

'What happened to the others?' Penelope asked. 'Did they go off together?'

'I don't know—I suppose they did.'

'And you were left only with me.'

'Yes.' He could think of nothing to soften or adorn the bare affirmative.

'You must have been disappointed,' said Penelope, turning her head away from him.

'On the contrary—I couldn't imagine a pleasanter ending to a delightful evening.'

Rupert's gallantry sounded forced and mocking even to himself. He really must try harder, but her rather curious behaviour didn't make things easier for him. He longed for the sensible maturity of Ianthe.

'But I've never brought you an oxtail like Ianthe did,' Penelope suddenly burst out in a defiant tone.

'Ianthe... an
oxtail
?' he repeated incredulously. He felt as Penelope had when he first told her of the incident—that it was impossible to imagine Ianthe doing anything with an oxtail. When, indeed, had
anyone
brought him such an unlikely thing? he asked himself. Then he remembered and began to laugh. 'Oh,
that
. . .' he said.

'Had you forgotten?'

'Yes, for the moment. But it wasn't Ianthe who brought it. It was Sister Dew—Enid, as we should perhaps call her.'

'Sister Dew?' Shame and relief sounded in her voice. She ought to have known, for obviously it was Sister Dew one would imagine coming up to the door with a covered basin.

'Yes, Enid Dew.' He smiled at the remembrance of her Tennysonian Christian name.

'Oh, I see.'

Penelope sat apart from him saying nothing until after some minutes she looked out of the window and said, 'Aren't we nearly there? This looks like that church at the top of the Spanish Steps.'

'Yes, so it is,' he said, realizing that he had forgotten what the Italian word for 'stop' was.

But Penelope seemed to have told the driver where they wanted to go, and all Rupert had to do was to fumble with notes and coins while she stood a little distance away with her back to him.

'There,' he said, 'that's done. Shall we stand here for a bit and look at the view?'

'If you like,' said Penelope unhelpfully.

They leaned on the stone balustrade, surrounded by American tourists, and looked down into the azaleas. Still Penelope seemed quiet and sulky, so Rupert, after commenting on the beauty of the flowers, lapsed into silence too. After a while he stole a sideways glance at her and saw to his dismay that tears were running down her cheeks.

What have I done—or
not
done—he asked himself, but he knew that the question was unanswerable. Women were so hopelessly irrational, though Ianthe would not have behaved like this, he thought complacently. All the same, the sight of Penelope's distress on what should have been—indeed, what
had
been—a very enjoyable evening was upsetting. Rather tentatively he put his arm round her shoulders and drew her closer to him.

'What is it?' he asked. 'I can't bear to see you cry—is it my fault in some way?' Could it have been something to do with the oxtail? he wondered wildly.

She uttered some strangled sound that might have been 'no', but her crying did not stop.

The American lady on the other side was beginning to take a sympathetic interest. Her eyes behind their odd shaped spectacles gave Rupert an appraising and rather steely stare. It was really most unjust and not a little unnerving.

'Please, Penny, don't cry,' he said more urgently. 'I can't bear to see you unhappy. You're always such a jolly little thing.'

She stopped crying in astonishment—'a jolly little thing'! So that was how he thought of her—what could be worse.
Jolly
and a
thing
. .
. she began to cry again.

'Poor little Pre-Raphaelite beatnik,' he murmured, stroking her hair. Gently he started to lead her down the steps with the idea of finding some more secluded spot where he might kiss her.

As they walked she managed to regain control of herself and began to apologize, wondering what on earth he must think of her and begging him to forget all about it if he could.

Rupert hardly knew what to say. If only he could take her to bed with him, he thought as they approached the pensione, so much might be smoothed out there. But perhaps it was just as well that circumstances made it impossible at this moment, for that might bring about even deeper complications.

'It must have been the Chianti,' said Penelope, smiling and sniffing. 'Some wines are said to have a depressing effect.'

'Well, as long as it's nothing I've done,' said Rupert, relieved but not altogether convinced.

She wondered how she was going to be able to face him again after this dreadful evening, but perhaps they need never meet again. The bitterness of being described as a jolly little thing would remain with her for a long time, she felt.

As for Rupert, he could not help reflecting on the irony of a situation that now made him want to take Penelope to bed when he had intended to have a decorous flirtation with Ianthe. Was he in some way irrevocably committed to her? Perhaps it was a good thing that he had already decided to spend a few days working in the Vatican Library—that convenient hiding place and haven of scholars, to name only the least obvious of its uses. He was too modest to believe that Penelope could have fallen in love with him, yet the memory of her tears disquieted him and he realized that he could hardly at this stage start paying attention to Ianthe. That would have to wait until they were back in England.

It was a grey morning when Sophia and Ianthe left Rome, the kind of morning one might just as easily have had in England. From the train the country looked uninteresting except when a small town came into view on a distant hill top.

'I feel rather guilty coming away with you like this,' said Ianthe, after they had exclaimed together over one such pretty little town.

'It's only a few days,' said Sophia, 'and it's such a waste for you not to see a bit of the south while you're here.' She hoped Ianthe wasn't going to spoil this part of the holiday by having dreary scruples about her work.

'Yes, it does, after coming all this way,' said Ianthe. 'I've written to Mervyn Cantrell at the library and he should get the letter today or tomorrow. Of course these few days will come off my summer holiday so it isn't as if I'm taking any
extra
time off.'

'Mark and the Pettigrews
had
to get home and Sister Dew was well enough to travel with them, and Penelope . . .' Sophia hesitated, not quite knowing what to say about her sister. She had appeared to be upset about something to do with Rupert Stonebird, but Sophia had not been able to gather exactly what had taken place between them on that evening in Trastevere. Some little scene—wine and kisses—tears and the beauty of the Roman evening—it was not difficult to imagine. Could it have been a lovers' 'tiff? Sophia wondered hopefully. Whatever it had been, Penelope had seemed anxious to go back to London and Rupert had hidden himself away in the Vatican Library to work—a natural but perhaps slightly cowardly thing for a man to do. It was obviously better to remove Ianthe from Rome in case he should emerge, as he was bound to eventually, and find her there. Not that Ianthe had wanted to stay on by herself; she had seemed eager to go with Sophia to her aunt's villa for a few days. The idea of Basil Branche being still in Rome evidently had no attraction for her. Unless she was purposely fleeing from him in the hope that . . . here Sophia realized that she was tired and closed her eyes, as if by so doing she could shut out further tortuous imaginings. She decided to meditate on Faustina, to try to picture what she would be doing at this moment. Various little scenes came into her mind—Faustina at her dish, her head on one side, vigorously chewing a piece of meat; sitting upright and thumping her tail, demanding for the door to be opened; reposing on a bed, curled up in a circle; sharpening her claws on the leg of an armchair—so many of these pictures brought the cat before her, so that she could almost smell her fresh furry smell and her warm sweet breath.

Ianthe meditated on the landscape and the other people in the train, who were as unremarkable—though in an Italian way—as a similar collection of people in an English train might have been. The only differences were that the priest looked somehow dirty, and the young couple were gazing at each other in a way not found in England. Yet here Ianthe became doubtful—did a Church of England clergyman never look dirty?—did young English couples never gaze at each other so devouringly? After all, John had kissed her at the station, she thought, lowering her eyes as she felt Sophia looking at her.

'You can tell we're getting to the south,' she said enthusiastically. 'The sun's shining and the houses look different.'

'Yes—the flat roofs are rather ugly, aren't they.'

'But look at the oranges,' said Sophia reproachfully.

'Are we nearly at Naples, then?'

'Yes—we have to change there. In fact here, at Mergellina. Isn't the air wonderfully different?' said Sophia as they stepped out of the high train.

'There's a sort of peculiar smell,' said Ianthe uncertainly.

'Yes—the Bay—it's a kind of emanation. You sometimes get it in London at unexpected times.'

Ianthe was glad that Sophia was with her and knew what to do and where to find the train to Salerno. It was not until they were in the bus winding along the coast road towards Amalfi that she began to feel her spirits rising again. A journey, especially a foreign one, is always tiring, with the added fear or excitement of not knowing exactly what one is going to find at the end of it. Ianthe thought sympathetically of English governesses going out to strange families. Then the bus turned up the road to Ravello and she forgot her strangeness in the more immediate excitement of the twisting road and the view revealed at each bend of it.

When they reached the square an old woman in a black dress and a young boy were there to meet them. Sophia embraced the old woman and said something to her in Italian which made her cackle with laughter.

Surely this couldn't be Sophia's aunt? Ianthe wondered. The boy had seized their suitcases and was hurrying on ahead up a rough path.

'This is Anna,' Sophia explained. 'I'm afraid she doesn't speak English, but she'll get you anything you want—she's very quick at understanding one's needs. And here is the Villa Faustina!'

So the cat had been named after the villa, thought Ianthe in confusion, not quite knowing what the significance of this might be. 'It's lovely,' she said. 'It reminds me of
The Enchanted April
—the wistaria and the roses . . .'

Sophia had forgotten exactly what happened in that book, but remembered enough to realize that there was a sort of bringing together of husbands and wives and that in the end everybody was satisfactorily and happily paired off. She imagined Rupert Stonebird coming up the steep path to the villa, wearing a dark suit and carrying a briefcase. And Ianthe running, tumbling, falling into his arms.
That
was not the sort of thing she wanted to happen and must be prevented at all costs, but somehow she did not see Basil Branche coming up the path and Ianthe falling into
his
arms.

'This is my aunt,' she said firmly, as a tall thin elderly woman came out on to the terrace to greet them.

'How do you do,' said Ianthe, taking the hand extended to her. Sophia's aunt had rather mad-looking dark eyes and was dressed in black. There was a family likeness between her and Sophia. After so many years in Italy she spoke English with a trace of foreign accent.

Ianthe was relieved to be shown to her room and left to unpack. She stepped out onto the little balcony rather nervously, for it did not seem to be very safe, and looked down over acres of lemon groves. The trees were covered with matting so that the fruit was almost hidden, but Ianthe could feel that there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lemons hanging there among the leaves. All those lemons, she thought, Sister Dew would say that they almost gave one the creeps. Beyond the lemon groves she could see the sea which she found more reassuring because beyond it lay England, her little house, the library, and John.

She began to unpack, taking out the photographs of her father and mother and placing them almost defiantly on the dressing table. Again she was reminded of the governesses of a hundred or even fifty years ago, coming to a strange country to live and work, and felt grateful that she would never have to experience the loneliness of that kind of life. A canon's daughter, left alone in the world but with enough money to live comfortably in her own house—it seemed a contradiction in terms.