Death of a Dutchman (10 page)

The Marshal was beginning to understand. Apart from the difference in trade, it could have been the Dutchman. Did the Dutchman take after his father? If so, he could understand why the father and Signora Wilkins had married. But that must have been much later . . .

'What happened to him, then, this Signor Wilkins?'

'He died rather suddenly. She was heartbroken, but they'd had a good many happy years together by then. They used to travel a lot, she loved to tell me about that. She'd seen the world—even sailed up the Congo once in a cargo boat, can you imagine? It wouldn't suit me, all those black men, and it couldn't have been very clean, but her eyes used to light up when she talked about it. Oh, the hours we spent chatting together. If only she'd stayed here . . .

'They loved Italy more than any other place; they had their first real holiday here, and after that, wherever else they went they always spent some time here every year. They saw more of this country than you or I are ever likely to. They used to drive round, stopping wherever suited them. They learned the language, too, and read a lot-nothing studious, you know, but stories and histories of the places they visited. They were never happier, she always says, than when they were,here, as is only natural. I've never been to England myself but they say the weather's very grey and there's no wine grown. I'm not a great wine-drinker myself and never have been, but imagine there not being any . . . it's not civilized . . .'

'No, no,' murmured the Marshal, trying to imagine a grey world without vines but not succeeding. It seemed to him unlikely.

'Anyway, when Wilkins died of a stroke, she came and settled over here. They'd often talked about it as something they might do when he retired.'

'She must have been a very courageous woman, to set out on her own and in such sad circumstances.'

'Of course she was courageous! She'd had the guts to marry a man with nothing, against her family's wishes, and to work like a slave with him when she hadn't been brought up to it. Of course she was courageous—not like some I could mention who—'

'And the sister,' interrupted the Marshal firmly, 'did she marry, as yours eventually did?'

'Ah! She got what she deserved—not that she thought so. She married for money, a man a lot older than herself. She was even barefaced enough to say to Signora Wilkins that she fully expected him to die before too long and leave her comfortably off! After that she thought she'd find somebody she liked better! But all her grasping ways did her no good at all; her husband fell ill but he didn't die, not for eleven years! It turned out he was a diabetic but nobody had known, until one day he crushed his finger in a door. He had it dressed but it didn't heal. Instead, it began to stink—gangrene! Can you imagine? He lost part of the finger and started treatment for diabetes, but it got steadily worse. By the end he'd lost a leg and his eyesight was failing rapidly. So, instead of quickly inheriting his money, she had to nurse him. It doesn't bear thinking about, the sort of life she led him once she found out that there wasn't any money either! It seems he'd fancied himself as a speculator, and once he was bedridden and she took over his affairs she found that he had nothing but a lot of worthless shares. She had no choice but to write to her sister, who was settled out here by then, and ask her for money. I gather they were even in danger of being evicted, of having their mortgage foreclosed. At any rate, Signora Wilkins gave her money, I don't know how much, and the use of her house in England. She told me she was glad to have somebody living in it; that it was immoral to leave it standing empty and she couldn't bear to think of selling. But I warned her, I said, you'll have nothing but trouble from that one. I'd seen it all before. She's jealous of you, I told her— Goossens was on the scene by then, so that was another reason for jealousy. But poor Signora Wilkins, she wouldn't have it. She wouldn't see wrong in her own sister—I sometimes think it was because there was no evil in herself that she couldn't recognize it in others. It doesn't do to be that innocent in this world. But then, she was happy herself and wouldn't wish anybody ill.'

'Where did she meet Goossens?'

'Here in this house. She took the flat below—not the one on the right where that old witch is, the one on the left where the young couple live now. Goossens and little Toni were up here across the way, as you've seen. His first wife was Italian but she died of cancer, poor creature, when the child was only ten. Toni, I ought to call him Ton but I never do, spent a lot of his time here with me while his father was downstairs in the workshop.'

'So that was his place, in those days?'

'Certainly it was. He started it. He was from Amsterdam and he had a business there, but he'd always come to Florence, mostly to buy designs. He was a good craftsman and said so, but he was no artist, and Italian design, he used to tell me, is famous the world over. He was a cutter, himself, and would bring stones to the jewellers down here and buy designs. When he met and married his Italian wife they lived in Amsterdam for a while but it seems she never settled. She'd never been abroad before and spoke no language but Italian . . . and then the cold ... So, eventually, he set up a workshop downstairs and he bought this flat up here.'

'Was his wife in the jewellery business, too?'

'She was a designer. He'd always admired and bought her work—but don't think it was a marriage of convenience because he wasn't that sort. He grieved for years when she died. It was a sad household for that little boy. It was just after she died that he was taken badly with rheumatic fever.'

'At least he had his
mammina.'

'I did what I could, but I wasn't young, you know, even then. Think about it: when Toni's mother died he was ten and I would be sixty-one and already widowed. I couldn't be running about. Goossens still travelled a lot between here and Amsterdam. He'd put a manager in the workshop up there so as not to have to leave the child too often, but he was still taking up designs and bringing down stones to cut here. I looked after the child, but he would never sleep here. I always went over there . . . even when he had the fever ... It often crossed my mind that he couldn't bear to leave the house empty ... as if he thought his mother might one day come back. It's hard to believe in forever at that age. Anyway, you see why I've always had their keys . . .'

'And did you,' asked the Marshal, remembering the ringed word on a sheet of foolscap, 'give him—the son, I mean—your keys, for this flat?'

'Of course. He still has them . . . had them . . . poor Toni. . . why didn't he come to me? I don't understand it at all.'

'I believe he was trying to. He had your keys in his hand, if I'm not mistaken, when I found him. Do you mind if I get a glass of water?'

She was silent until he sat down again, shedding a few tears that, this time, were not tears of self-pity. She was absorbed in her memories and didn't notice when the window below opened again for a duster to be shaken out into the shady courtyard.

'And so,' prompted the Marshal, "then he met Signora Wilkins . . .'

'Right here in this flat. She'd soon got into the way of popping up to see if I needed anything. I don't think she let a day pass without calling in on me for at least a moment. She had no need to work, of course, but she couldn't bear to be idle. One day she came up and asked me what I thought of the idea of giving English lessons to the local children. She wanted to do it without taking payment but I persuaded her against that; people would have thought it peculiar, and if it comes to that, there are always those who don't pay up, she needn't have worried. It was the company she wanted, that and the idea of doing something useful for somebody. Her first pupil was young Toni. Goossens was delighted. He didn't expect the child to learn Dutch, but it seems that most Dutch people speak English, and Toni would have to take over the business some day and deal with Amsterdam. There were other pupils too, of course, but anyway, Toni was the first, and that's how she and Goossens met.'

'And then she became your next-door neighbour?'

'Not right away. I'll tell you something that I wouldn't tell anybody else: they were married more or less in secret, and she kept her flat downstairs for a year after that . . .'

The Marshal shifted uncomfortably on his hard chair which was a good deal too small for him; his back was beginning to ache. Signora Giusti, however, was showing no sign of flagging, sometimes leaning forward to rattle her tiny hands at him, sometimes tossing herself back into her cushions and chattering reminiscently at the ceiling.

'It was the child, you see. He was a quiet, sturdy boy but very sensitive. He had his father's heavy build but his mother's big dark eyes and artistic temperament. As pupil and teacher the two got on like a house on fire, but once he saw what was developing between her and his father he clammed up. It was a very tricky time for all three of them, and she sometimes came to me in tears. She'd never had a child of her own but she'd always wanted one and her heart went out to Toni. She had all the patience in the world with him, but there wasn't a scrap of response—not that he ever said a wrong word, you understand, he was always polite, always well-behaved. In the end, he began to behave in the same way to his father. They were in despair, the two of them. I often wondered if he just felt they wouldn't want him around and he was trying to show his independence. He must have thought a lot about his mother during that time, too. Who knows? He might have been fighting against Signora Wilkins because it seemed like a betrayal. There's no knowing what goes on in a child's mind.'

'How old was he then?'

'He'd be about fourteen because that summer he finished Middle School and started in the workshop with his father. There was a change in him right away. I suppose he must have felt he had a place in his father's world, after all. He worked like a little slave, I can see him now, filing away hour after hour at his bench, so desperately anxious to do everything just right. If he made the slightest mistake his eyes would fill up and his face redden.

'Then, one day, he broke a small file. I don't know how. Instead of telling anybody, he hid it. It was a week before anybody noticed—there were three other craftsmen in the studio and they all tended to stick to their own set of tools—and Toni got paler and more worried every day; nobody knew why, of course. In the end, he needed the file for some small job he'd been asked to do. He was terrified. His father was a stolid, even-tempered man and had never struck the boy in his life; nevertheless, he was a craftsman, and very strict about the way the studio was run. Looking after the tools was the first thing Toni had had to learn. Well, he came up here to me and her broke his heart. It seems ridiculous, looking back on it, especially as it turned out the file had been an old, slightly damaged one that they'd given him to practise with—though, of course, he didn't know that. I think he would have run away from home, you know, over a little thing like that, if I hadn't been here.'

'It happens. I've known children run away for less, and in less strained circumstances.'

'Well, luckily he had his
mammina
to run to instead. I was close to him but not involved, if you see what I mean, and then, I'd known his mother and I think that counted for a lot. I can see him now; he sat at that table there and broke his heart, great big sobs without a tear. I've never seen a child cry like that . . . His nerves were shattered and there were great black rings under his eyes . . . crumpled up there with his head on the table . . .'

It was more real to her, that day in the distant past, than the scene in the bedroom two days ago. But the Marshal, looking at the oilcloth-covered table where the young boy in his apprentice's black smock had wept, was seeing the figure crumpled behind the door, a towel bound uselessly round one hand.

'They're the only people who mean anything to me. The people round here, like that witch downstairs . . .'

'What happened about the file?'

'Well, of course Toni was missed and his father came looking for him here. Funny, he was a big, clumsy sort of man, although he did such fine work. In a crisis like that he stood there with his big, clever hands all limp. You could see that every one of the boy's sobs went right through him, but he wasn't a demonstrative man and he didn't know what to do. In the end I poured out a drop of vinsanto for him to give the child—and he was so distracted he began to drink it himself! I had to push him towards the table. Toni took a sip or two and then started on about the wretched file, trying to apologize; then he flung himself at his father and started to cry real tears.

'That was the crisis over with. After that his work came on like nobody's business. He had his father's feeling for solid craftsmanship, but there was Italian blood in him, too. "He's an artist," his father would say to me, time and time again, "He's an artist. I can teach him craftsmanship, but he knows things I don't know . . ."

'Every spare minute Toni had, he would draw, designing every sort of gold work and settings for the jewels he saw his father cutting. There was a ring he. designed that impressed his father so much that he decided they should make it together. It was in gold, and young Toni had never worked in gold—this was still his first year and he had only recently been given a small piece of silver to work on after having had only copper to learn on. Nevertheless, his father let him make part of the setting—but then, he was a very talented boy, there's no doubt about that, and gold is so much easier to work than harder metals, "like carving butter,
mammina"
he used to say to me, "just like carving butter!"

'It was a really special ring and it's hard to describe it...'

She was turning her own hands over each other as if feeling for the shape of it in her memory.

'It had a double layer of gold, a plain, broad, flat band with a layer of filigree over it, slightly broader. It gave the effect of fine lace over smooth silk, if you can understand me, and the overlapping, lacy edge had the tiniest possible stones in the border—each stone different and rather odd in shape; a miniature lozenge-shaped pearl, a brilliant sapphire, hardly bigger than a full stop, a slightly larger ruby, and three diamonds, all small, set between the two layers of gold so that they were only just visible, peeping through the "lace".'