Mimi's Ghost (2 page)

Paola positively pealed with laughter. ‘What an act!' she giggled. ‘What an act It always was! Poor Mimi was so hopeless. I knew she'd end up badly.'

But this was too painful. He said abruptly in the intimate gloom of their bedroom: ‘So you're giving up your career?'

She puffed. ‘I never had one, darling. Just passed all my exams copying everybody else. You know how it is here. I could never understand why Mimi didn't do the same.'

Then Morris startled himself by saying with genuine tenderness: ‘OK, but then let's have a child. I've always wanted a little boy.'

But again she positively shook with laughter.
‘Nemmeno per sogno, Morris! that can wait
at least five or six years.'

‘So what are you going to do in the meanwhile? I mean, we've never really talked about this.'

‘Have a good time.' She blew out a smoke ring and cocked her head to one side in a sly smile. Certainly she was not the picture of demure bereavement that had first drawn him to her and put the whole idea into his head the day of MImi's funeral. And she added: I 'feel I'm only starting to live.'

‘While I slave at the company?'

‘I thought that was what you wanted. You nearly jumped for joy when Mamma had her stroke.'

He stared at her.

‘And now, if you are not going to do the honours. I think I'll take a shower.'

She stood up and, coming round the bed, tweaked his nose. ‘Silly old Mo,' she laughed, again speaking pidgin English, and walked out with some deliberately exaggerated arse wiggling in tiny tight white pants.

Morris shut his eyes.

A few minutes later he was outside the smart and decidedly expensive condominium. The air was biting. Under the grey fog, frost rimed every surface. A stately row of cypresses loomed rigid and white. The laurel hedge by the gate was draped with icy cobwebs. Morris was the kind of person who noticed and appreciated such things.

Wearing a tastefully grey wool coat and lilac cashmere scarf, he drove into town in a small white Mercedes. If he had had his way of course, he would have bought a place right in the ancient centre and not bothered with a car at all. But Paola had wanted to be quite sure she wouldn't have to put up with unexpected visits from her mother, who was endlessly bothering sister Antonella and brother-in-law Bobo; she had thus felt that one of these chic new condominiums out in the country the other side of town from Mamma would be more to her liking. Morris, still in a state of foolish euphoria at being accepted, at least legally, into the family, had been at his most accommodating.

Given Mamma's sudden deterioration these last couple of months, this decision had probably been a mistake, Morris now realised. Especially since no one knew quite how the company was to be divided up on her departure. Had he and Paola been living that bit nearer they would have been in a better position to show respect for her, their compassion and maturity. Certainly Antonella and Bobo were being most assiduous. Morris felt he should have foreseen all this and not been so ready to let Paola have her way. But he was new to marriage, had embarked on it with the best intentions, and anyway it was easy to be wise after the event. One thing Morris was learning these days was not to be too hard on himself.

Driving fast, he picked up the car phone and called Forbes. The man's cultured, gravelly voice enquired:
‘Pronto?'i
n an accent that was more or less a declaration of British superiority. Morris, so proud of his own achievements in sounding Italian, becoming Italian, truly being Italian, was nevertheless fascinated by this older man's refusal to adapt in any way, by the ostentatious manner in which he appreciated Italy and Italian art as a foreign connoisseur, an outsider. He didn't seem to share or even understand Morris's need for camouflage at all.

Morris announced himself and apologised if perhaps he had wakened the older man.

‘Ah, Morris, I would forgive you more than that.' There was immediately a fruity generosity in his pensioner's voice.

It's just I was thinking of going down to Florence at the weekend. Do you want to come? There's a picture I'd like to look at. In the Uffizi.'

‘Splendid idea.'

‘What I was thinking was, if I took you with me you could explain everything. I hope you don't consider that presumptuous of me. I'm a bit weak on some of that early Renaissance stuff.'

‘Only too glad to help, no problem.'

‘And on the way maybe we could talk about that little piece of business you suggested.'

‘If you think there's any hope of raising the capital,' Forbes said humbly. ‘I'm afraid that with my limited means . . .'

‘Something might be arranged,' hinted a Morris who had married into a wealthy family and didn't need to hide the fact. Or at least not from Forbes. On the contrary, it was nice to think he had this asset that encouraged a man like Forbes to give him some of his time. The only danger was he might have exaggerated.

‘I'll be over to pick you up Saturday morning, around nine,' he said.

‘Er, do you mind making it nine-thirty, Morris? I'm not an early bird.'

‘Not at all.'

They both rang off. But then it was so much fun, talking on a designer phone in a fast car, so much the perfect symbol of his well-deserved success, that, as quite often these days, this handsome blond Englishman continued to chat away, even after the line had gone dead.

‘Pronto?'
he enquired coolly. ‘Massimina, can you hear me? Bit of a bad connection, I'm afraid. Can you hear me? It is the Day of the Dead, you know.'

He imagined he heard her saying yes in her intimate, breathless, girlish voice. Or rather s
ì ‘Sì, Morri,
sì.'

The fog suddenly thickened on the road into town and was swirling all round the car now.

‘You know I've seen a painting of you? Yes. No, I knew you wouldn't believe me.' He spoke very casually into the elegant white receiver, cruising in overdrive into zero visibility. Somehow it seemed important to take these risks, as if every time one escaped one had bought some good fortune for oneself.
‘I
was reading one of my art-history books and there you were. Yes, it was Fra Lippi's
La Vergine incoronata.
I mean, it must be you. It's so exactly the same. And it made me think, you know, Mimi, seeing as he'd painted you five hundred years before you were born, that perhaps you were still alive now, that perhaps in a way you
were
the Virgin, reincarnated again and again, for one
incoronazione
after another . . .'

Heavens, this was oddball stuff, Morris thought. He hadn't known he was going to come out with this sort of sick drivel at all. On the other hand, one of the things that most gratified him, that most convinced him he must be something of an artist deep down, was the way he never ceased to surprise himself. He wasn't getting old and stale at all. On the contrary, his train of thought was ever richer.

The fog pressed down on the car, seemed to clutch and catch at it as it flew past.

...so that I couldn't really have killed you at all, could I, Mimi?'

Suddenly finding a pink blur of tail lights only feet ahead, Morris braked hard and geared down violently. But it wasn't enough. To avoid a collision, he swung left to overtake into absolute grey blindness. Immediately headlights appeared. The local bus skidded towards him. Morris squeezed round a 126 to a chorus of klaxons.

He picked up the receiver from the passenger seat where it had fallen. ‘. . . And I just thought, Mimi, I thought, if you could give me some sign, or something, you know, that you're alive and well, it would mean so much to me. Any sign. So long as I really know it's you. And that you've forgiven me.'

Morris frowned. For, of course, the worst part of recognising her in that Madonna by the Renaissance painter had been remembering how the post-mortem had shown she was pregnant. Mimi was pregnant and he had killed his own child, their love-child, a saviour perhaps. This horrible fact could still occasionally rise to the surface of Morris's consciousness, bringing with it a sense of nausea and profound unease. Though again, this was actually rather gratifying in a way, since otherwise one might have been concerned that one had no sensibility at all. Experience suggested it was a common enough failing.

‘Will you do that for me, Mimi? Give me a sign? I don't care what form it takes, just that it be clear.'

Again he imagined her saying: Sì,
Morri,
sì,' in that most accommodating voice she had had. Certainly Massimina could never have been accused of having addressed him as Mo or having invited him to jump into the sack and give her a poke. Sex had been something special with her, something holy. Mimi, had he had the good fortune to marry her, would never have been so selfish as not to want to have children. Then all at once an idea had him laughing. What a funny old bloke I am, he thought. Get Paola pregnant despite herself is what I should do. Give her a purpose in life. Before she becomes a mere fashionable parasite. She'll thank me for it in the end. Wasn't that the purpose of marriage, as declared in the wedding service?

Amidst these and other thoughts, some of them only half- conscious perhaps, Morris suddenly changed his mind. Acting on one of those intuitions he had learnt to trust over the years, he chose not to go straight to the florist's to pick up the huge wreath he had ordered, but turned right, up the Valpantena, on the fast road into the hills where the family had its winery.

He came out of the fog shortly above Quinto and drove very fast on this holiday morning as far as Grezzana. In grey winter light the valley was rather ugly, with its ribbon development of light industry and second-rate housing projects, many of which had a disturbingly English flavour to them. Certainly it wasn't the Italy his spirit had yearned for when he had decided to marry into one of their rich families. He had talked this over at length with Forbes: the race was obviously degenerating. They still produced and loved beautiful things, and this was very important for Morris, who could imagine few other reasons for being alive; but they didn't seem to care if they made their country ugly in the doing of it, and they appeared to think of beauty more as a consumer product than something of spiritual value, a question of owning a particular shirt and tie, a particular style in furnishing. Many of them had no idea at all of their own historical art and heritage. It was a shame, Morris thought, a real shame, and he turned off the road along a gravel track that after a couple of turns brought him to the three long, low, breeze-block constructions that made up the vinification, bottling and storage facilities of Trevisan Wines.

He fiddled in his glove compartment for the right remote control and a long, low gate began to rattle and whine. The new dog barked wildly, as it always would at Morris, as dogs always had with him since as early as he could remember. He must talk to Bobo about it, try to get through to him that it was completely pointless keeping such a beast, since if somebody did want to break in they would surely have no difficulty shooting the thing. No one was around to hear a gunshot in these low-key industrial areas outside working hours. You had to think of such things.

Unless Bobo had been meaning to prevent precisely visits of this variety, Morris wondered. His own. But that was paranoia. He was a member of the family now. And once you were family, you were family.

He pulled up and turned off the engine. The big Dobermann or whatever it was (for Morris had not the slightest interest in animals) snarled and leapt around the car. Uncannily, it seemed to be aware of the door he would have to get out of. Oh, for Christ's sake! This was a problem he hadn't considered at all. But far too silly to make him change his mind, surely.

He started up again and drove through shale and puddles to the door of the office located in a kind of annexe at the end of the long building that housed the bottling plant. He managed to negotiate the car into a position only six inches or so from the door, and while the dog was squeezing, panting and yelping to get into the narrow space, Morris buzzed down the window, slipped his key into the lock and turned it twice. He then drove away, heading around the building at little more than walking pace, thus luring the stupid animal into a following trot through parked trucks and stacks of bottles. Then, turning the last corner, he accelerated hard to arrive back at the door with just the few seconds' grace he needed to be out of the car and into the building. He slammed the door behind him. The dog was furious. Likewise Morris. And he decided on the spot he would poison the thing.

There are three major wine-producing areas around Verona: the Valpolicella to the north and west; Soave twenty kilometres to the east; and, between them, the Valpantena, stretching north from the eastern suburbs of the city. The first two need no advertising anywhere in the world. Indeed Morris even remembered his father picking up the occasional ‘Suave' to impress one of his tarts after Mother's death, while Morris himself had drunk many a glass of ‘Valpolicelly' at artsy-fartsy Cambridge parties without having the slightest idea where the place really was. Had the Trevisans, then, had their vineyards in either of these two areas, there would have been no obstacles to the grandiose plans of expansion Morris liked to conjure (the principle being, surely, that if one deigned to do something, and above all something commercial, then one should do it in grand style).

But the Valpantena . . . the Valpantena was decidedly second rate. It was difficult to get DOC certification. The soil was too clayey. The alcohol rating was low. The wine had no body and less flavour. Worse still, it simply had a name for being plonk. With the result that sales were falling sharply as the population moved up-market in the wake of snobbery and brand-name advertising, while the dour hard-drinking peasantry succumbed to cirrhosis and the miserliness (since Thatcher) of those European subsidies aimed at keeping them on the land and inside the thousands of smoky rural dives where Valpantena was drunk over interminable games of
briscola,