Lettice & Victoria (2 page)

Chapter 3

V
ictoria thought back over her reasons for being there in the first place. Stony-broke, on a frugal and protracted holiday in Rome, unable to survive by giving the odd English lesson, she had been defeated. She knew she must return home – but what then? Sharing her sickly mother’s cramped quarters; typing in a pool or something. Her mother didn’t miss her. She managed well enough, tottering to the public house at opening time, barely eating as much as a Scotch egg and returning with a lurch, cross and confused, to the slippery head of a kipper in the kitchen.

One evening in Rome, Victoria met a man at dinner. She had made friends with a group of English journalists who had asked her to join them at a trattoria. The man she sat next to was sixty or so, very sympathetic with tufty hair and soothing clothes; tweedy and well worn. She poured everything out; her fear of returning to London, her pressing indigence. How might she set herself up in Italy – untrained and ungifted as
she was? More than anything she wanted to paint watercolor landscapes. Her talent was tiny, she told him. James Morton wrote her telephone number down on a paper napkin and said he would sleep on her conundrums. In the morning, he rang and promised to collect her in an hour. There might be a
solution
. Not necessarily a hundred per cent satisfactory one and with no guarantee that it would ‘come off’ but she stood a chance.

She bundled down the dirty stairway at her lodging house in the mood for inducement.

Driving northwards from Rome, James outlined his plan.

‘I own a large and unmanageable castle about six hours from here, near the coast. An albatross. It will be a long drive. I have to go there to sort out problems. There are many, I can tell you. I fear it will have to be sold. It belonged to my grandmother. At present I rent it out for most of the year, but rent doesn’t bring in enough to cover the outgoings and I can’t charge my tenants much – it’s too dilapidated.’

That was good. They were both hard up – or rather both had money worries.

He planned that she spend that night at his albatross from where he was to make telephone calls.

Nearby, in style, lived an old blind man. A man of letters. Victoria had never heard of him since he was known only in rarefied circles.

His way of life depended upon his having an Englishman living in the house to act as amanuensis, to read aloud to him and to write his letters. James Morton put emphasis on the
word Englishman. No woman had ever held the post.
Laurence
Bland was reported to be a misogynist despite much weary pining for his wife, long dead. She had, according to James, been a frightful handful. Early in her life she had
married
a very rich man who had expired young, leaving her with one daughter. Later she married the writer Godfrey Slate who came to loathe her and who was a dirty word in Laurence’s vocabulary. Nonetheless, he liked to draw attention to a late edition of Slate’s
The Reality of Humanism
which, in the
preface
, quoted an earlier reader. ‘I have read your book thirteen times and find it tiresome.’ Now, Laurence was known to be desperate with loneliness on a promontory overlooking the bay where Shelley drowned. Anyone would do. Short-term maybe. James advised Victoria to give it a try. Living free, pocket money provided and plenty of time to paint the
magnificent
landscape. The perfect spot.

Laurence Bland never went near a telephone and James was uncertain as to whether his message had been delivered as they set out the following day.

Blue buses honked around curves, horns in constant use – so sharp were the bends. The villa stood high above a
fishing
port, not far in distance but interminable on the twisting ribbon of a road. Victoria felt sick, notwithstanding James’s driving which was steady and cautious. Apprehension played a part. Also she had woken that morning with toothache; threat of an abscess forming above an upper tooth, near the front. She had no painkiller and no nerve with which to ask for one in this world of ageing men. The gum throbbed rhythmically
as a painful pulse. Sneaking a glance in the driving mirror, she saw that her right cheek was puffy. James Morton laughed.

‘Don’t worry about your appearance. That’s the least of your problems. Laurence won’t be able to see you – but, if he could, he would be much pleased.’

Mortified at having appeared vain, Victoria came near to confession. On the other hand, to arrive like this with
toothache
would be to let her well-wisher down. She had to stick it out.

The car had to be wrenched around to enter a drive that passed a lodge half-hidden in drooping wisteria. The flowers were pearly white; drop earrings for a giant’s floozie. Victoria had never seen anything like it. Then the drive to the house – precipitous, downward sloping – rounded on a curve to the front of the villa leaving paths leading to the sea on the left. It was July and the bay was calm. Ilex and olive trees gave light to the entire space; acres of it. Silver glinted from leaves.

Elena, the maid, was standing there beside a lemon tree planted in a terracotta tub and bowed with bitter fruit.
Cascades
of verbiage preceded them as they crossed the threshold. The
padrone
. He had, indeed, expected
Signor
Morton but had given them the impression that he was to be accompanied by a
signorino
. And here was a
signorina
. The
signorina
followed, face in a spasm, the reddish dot still showing on her right cheek. A teething baby. Fortunate she wasn’t dribbling. It was very hot, even for July.

They were led up a wide stairway and she was in a state of wonder at the shady beauty of all around her.

Then they were there, in Laurence Bland’s study. He held his hand high in greeting.

‘My dear James. You bring me help, I hear. I am most
grateful
. Where is he? I didn’t catch his name. Introduce me.’

James approached and neared the chair of the misinformed host as Victoria hung back.

‘Laurence. The message was incorrectly conveyed. I have a young lady with me. Victoria. Victoria Pattern.’

‘I don’t think that will do at all. Dear me no. Not at all.’

‘Wait for a bit. She’s prepared to act as stopgap. Help you with letters and so forth – even if you don’t care to be read aloud to by a woman. I’m certain she can be of use.’

Victoria stood by the door – face inflamed, under discussion.

Egg mousse for luncheon on the terrace. Alfredo, the surly butler, attended with a smile of triumph on his lips. They were enjoying the joke – he and the cook. A young lady indeed!

Victoria tried to talk, exclaiming on the beauty of the place, shyly and in agony. Lucky it was mousse and slipped down past the abscess.

James talked Laurence into taking her on pro tem.

After lunch she was shown to her bedroom. Her few
possessions
were with her and with the help of Elena she laid clothes and oddments on empty shelves. Elena, ecstatic to have female company other than the cook’s, attached herself with zeal.

James Morton departed, wishing her luck with a pat on the back.

That evening she ate alone with Laurence on the terrace. The ache in her face was harrowing. Elena had come up with some
yellow pills and Victoria had swallowed a cluster as she hoped for the best. Dinner was as bad as could be. Alfredo, wearing white gloves, crept around the table and Laurence, willing the venture to flop, did nothing to encourage talk but picked at his omelette with a pearl-handled knife as a vast clay Buddha, not unlike himself, watched with blank eyes from above a
tortoiseshell
cabinet. She decided to make a determined effort the next day when definite duties might be laid out; letters and so on. How perfect it was in other ways. Landscape and architecture. She wanted to stay for a while – to live free in a beauty spot with time to take stock.

As she went to her room she overheard Laurence shuffling towards his own. He gasped and muttered, ‘She won’t do at all. Hopeless. No idea. Absolutely no idea whatsoever.’

Victoria dipped a flannel in cold water, pressed it to her cheek and lay down on the four-poster bed.

Chapter 4

A
part from the beauty and luxury of the place, the first few days, for Victoria, were ghastly. At least the toothache had
subsided
– perhaps assuaged by the yellow pills.

Each morning, when she took up her duties in the near-
shuttered
room to wait for the morning post to be brought in on a pewter tray by Elena, Laurence did no more than groan as he sat blinking and as his mauve feet spilled over velvet slippers.

Every weekday they awaited a crinkly airmail edition of the London
Times
, letters from Laurence’s younger relations and on Wednesdays a copy of Sir Stephen King Hall’s pacifist newsletter – with every syllable of which Laurence (who had been a conscientious objector during the war) agreed.

One morning a letter came for Victoria – addressed in an unknown hand. It arrived with the pacifist pamphlet and she had to put it aside and get on with Laurence’s correspondence.

Once in her own room, she opened it. It came from her new friend, James Morton, the one who had landed her in it.

She read it absorbedly, again and again. ‘My dear Victoria. Since I got back to England I have been feeling very
apprehensive
about your possible plight. Believe me, I would more than fully understand if you had already left. Laurence can be prickly and negative – also extremely spoilt. If,
however
, you are sticking it out, I have decided to give you a few tips!

‘Laurence likes to talk of his wife. I imagine that you, with much justification, may have been fighting shy of the topic. She was a fiend and he worshipped her. It was, I imagine, a
mariage blanc
– Laurence having always preferred gentlemen to ladies and neither of them having been young when they married. She, Lady Sylvia (very important to remember the Lady bit), inherited a large fortune from her first husband. It’s thought that she roped Laurence in when Godfrey Slate – her second husband – could stand no more of her. I once heard of a scene in a church in Florence where a memorial service was being held. Halfway through it Lady Sylvia whimpered, “
Godfrey
. I’m going to faint.” Whereupon he shouted, “All right,
Sylvia
. Faint if that’s what you want.”

‘She and Laurence came to the bay just after the war –
having
spent much of it in Switzerland – to the newly built house where now, perhaps, you still are. It’s rumoured that Lady S. actually caused Laurence to lose his sight by insisting he read to her far into the night by the light of a pencil torch (anything brighter brought on one of her headaches).

‘One night, so it’s said, she was aggravated by the noise of a dog barking by the shore and sent Laurence out to have it shot.
He, of course, pacifist and aesthete that he is, had no gun and had to rouse the gardener to do the job for him.

‘I tell you all this to amuse you and also to suggest that you ask him about Sylvia. It might work magic. Affectionately, James.’

She took James’s advice that evening at supper. ‘Tell me, Laurence, did your wife like you to read to her?’

He started, brightened and smiled. He took to her and she stayed on – almost the first woman, apart from domestic
helpers
, since the death of his hallowed wife, to penetrate the
celibate
sanctuary in years.

His stepdaughter came occasionally for a night to make sure that everything went well on the estate – destined to belong to her. The visits used to frighten Laurence into long silences for she was a formidable creature with a gigantic brain, a gigantic nose and very expensive clothes. She, Primrose, had married an Italian count and lived way south in Tuscany. She treated Victoria graciously as she might have done an invaluable servant whose notice she wished to avert. She praised her for her inner resource and increased her pocket money.

Occasionally the telephone rang. If the call was an English one, Victoria was summoned to deal with it. Laurence had long since given up the use of gadgets and was shaved each day by the male nurse. Sometimes calls were hard to deal with. Many pilgrims wanted to visit – Laurence having become an institution as a grand old man of letters living in a sensationally beautiful place – and calls were severely filtered.

The voice of an elderly man on the line. ‘Can you tell Mr
Bland that I am in the neighbourhood? Hobson. Arthur
Hobson
. Two of us. We’d like to pay our respects.’

She ran and explained to Laurence that Mr Hobson waited for an answer.

‘Arthur Hobson. He’s a terrible bore. I like her. Caterina. She once gave me an alarm clock. Tell them to come to lunch – any day.’ Unusual for Laurence to prefer a wife to a husband.

The day came and as they waited Laurence told Victoria, ‘Arthur is a very limited man but – Caterina. You will enjoy Caterina.’

Disguised eggs – soufflé, mayonnaise and meringues, were prepared by the cook – Elena doing the donkey work.

Victoria greeted the guests on the doorstep. This had become one of her duties, for Laurence liked things to be done stylishly. The visitors arrived on time at a quarter to one.

Arthur Hobson, in his seventies, dapper in Sunday summer white, came forward. He wore a moustache.

‘May I introduce you to my companion. Miss Lewes.’

Miss Lewes was American and many years younger than her protector. Not more than forty-five, Victoria guessed. Very dressy. It was lucky that Laurence would not be able to see her in her bright colours.

The alarm clock given to him by Caterina was wound up and ticking. Elena had scuttled about in Laurence’s bedroom until she discovered its hiding place. She set it correctly, squinting through slits, and placed it beside the Elba wine and sugary cakes.

Laurence threw up his hands.

‘My dears. I draw your attention to a priceless object. It is always here – at my side. As you know, I cannot see, so the pleasure of hearing your present tick is a heightened one. Come closer.’

Victoria went to him.

‘Laurence. Mr Hobson is here with Miss Lewes. I don’t think you have met her before.’

‘What’s that? Not Caterina? Oh, dear me no. That won’t do at all. Tell him that won’t do at all. Tell him some other time.’

Miss Lewes was aghast. It had been her idea. She had put pressure on her elderly lover to introduce her to the man of
letters
. The lover was knock-kneed, unmanned; wished he hadn’t shown off about his acquaintances.

‘Laurence,’ he advanced towards the seated form of the blind man. ‘Laurence. Miss Lewes is an admirer of your works.’

Laurence gave in with no grace and speeded up the arrival of lunch. It was served on the arched terrace, immediately outside the upstairs sitting room looking across rocks to the sea. Alfredo, white-coated, carried the food from the bowels of the house. That had become one of the cook’s many
bugbears
. Since the
padrone
had been confined to one floor,
soufflés
flopped on the stairs.

When the guests departed with minimum farewells and ‘another time bring Caterina’ as parting shot, Laurence broke the lifetime habit of sticking to writing letters in the morning. He wanted to share his little bit of scandal and to send letters that very afternoon.

Together Victoria and Laurence tackled four.

One to a niece, two to nephews, and one to a correspondent in Northamptonshire.

‘Imagine my surprise,’ Victoria wrote four times. ‘Not Caterina but a certain Miss Lewes…’