The Beast (18 page)

He pushed his chair back and stood up. His eyes bulged as they had never bulged before. His lips quivered, his whole flabby, unhealthy body itched. He put his hand in his pocket and laid a great deal of money on the table; more than enough to pay the bill. And then, as Meg, Alberto and most of the people in the restaurant stared at him, he said in his smallest, most hurt little voice ‘Please can we go home. I’m not feeling well.’

Meg helped him; Alberto helped him; two of the waiters from the restaurant helped him. Even so, he could hardly make it to the car. He felt he was going to choke, or vomit, or literally fall to pieces. And when he did manage to collapse into the back seat, with tears pumping from him, he was sure he would never be able to get out again. Never, that is, unless Alberto drove him away from here. Miles away. Hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Away from this town, away from that castle, and above all, away and away and away from that monster …

Alberto didn’t drive him away of course; he drove him back to the villa. But how he did get out of the car—and into the house, and into his room, and into bed—he didn’t know. He didn’t, in fact, know anything until the following morning, when he woke late with only the vaguest memory of what had happened the night before, and with the sensation
of having passed the last ten hours or so not in his bed at all, but in some appalling, mythical hell. It was only a sensation—if he could hardly remember what had happened before he had gone to sleep, he couldn’t at all remember what had happened later—but still, somewhere inside him he seemed to feel there were traces of where he had been; splinters, and cuts, and deep deep lesions.

Meg, who was already up when he came—feeling,
nevertheless
, quite refreshed—out of his room, almost rushed at him when she saw him.

‘Oh Benjie,’ she said, ‘are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ He attempted a smile. ‘I think so.’

‘Are you sure?’, Alberto, who seemed as concerned as Meg, asked him.

‘Yes, really,’ Benjamin said. ‘I can’t think what happened. But I’m fine now.’

Well, he thought, half an hour later, as he lay by the swimming pool, being watched anxiously by Meg and Alberto—he had tried to persuade them to go to the beach, but they wouldn’t hear of it—he was almost fine. But even if he couldn’t remember precisely what had happened last night, he could remember the essential points. Indeed, he only had to stand up and gaze down the flat stretch of coast towards the town, and look at the castle glistening in the bright morning sun, to remind himself. And as he did just that (though it didn’t at all, neither the castle nor the knowledge of who lay within, have the effect it had had on him previously; in fact he could almost tell himself how irrational he had been last night, and that he must have been merely physically sick), he knew that what he had felt, whether irrational or not, and whether just the result of some physical sickness or not, could, unless he was very careful, come back to him. It had been, his reaction to
Alberto’s passing comment about what the castle
contained
, a warning. And he would ignore it at his peril.

*

He didn’t ignore it; and for the next five days never left the villa or its garden. Meg and Alberto did the shopping, and he excused himself from ever accompanying them to the beach on the grounds that without his clothes he wasn’t a very pleasant sight, that he was sensitive about it—which was true—and that the swimming pool was a good deal cleaner than the beach or the sea—which was also true.

‘Safer, too,’ Alberto said. ‘You sometimes get freak waves round here. Well, not actually right here, but nearer the town, where the coast curves.’

So he was, in every way, better off never going out, he thought.

But in spite of this—or in part because of it, for,
whatever
the reason, what sort of holiday was it when he felt obliged to stay put in one place?—after five days he realized that he wasn’t really happy. Of course he had the occasional moment of happiness—when he was sitting with Meg having a drink by the pool in the early evening, listening to the crickets and smelling the scent of the pines—but for the most part there was something nagging at him, something burrowing under his skin like a bilharzia worm, and consuming him. And what it was, he knew—and yes, it
was
irrational—was the idea that he was being continually overlooked by a town swarming with men and machines he couldn’t control, and dominated by a man who, if given the chance, would control him. It was more than irrational, he told himself; it was virtual madness. The servicemen were only doing a job, and the prisoner in the castle was just an ageing man with, probably, the spirit of
a mean bureaucrat, who had once, quite a long time ago, been in a position where he could wield, dreadfully, far too much power. And that was all.

That
was
all, he told himself again and again, as he lay by the swimming pool, wishing he felt like writing, or painting. Yet he couldn’t, try as he might, convince himself. That would have been all if he had found himself in a similar position back home in the States. But here, where he was no longer Benjamin Thomas of
Time
magazine fame, where he no longer had either a reputation or a talent, where he was nothing but Meg’s brother, that wasn’t all. Here, cut off from himself and his world, he was adrift somehow in an unreal land; yet a land which was, in a way, far more real than the land he inhabited for the rest of the year, and in a land which, while other years had been wonderful, was this year terrible.

To make matters worse, and to compound his unease, he also realized that, apart from those occasional moments by the pool in the evening, he was beginning to feel actively bored, most of the time, with Meg. Other years he had listened to her talking to her boy-friends about people, and movies, and her current job—since she had been eighteen she had specialized in secretarial jobs all over Europe; Benjamin had always persuaded her that Europe, or
anywhere
, was better than the States, where
They
might have been able to get at her—and had always admired the way she could chatter on, and could listen to her boy-friends talk about their studies or jobs or cars, without, seemingly, becoming involved in all that trite gossip. It had been like a gentle drizzle falling on the back of a splendid duck; one shake and it was all gone. Only this year, Meg appeared to believe in what she talked to Alberto about; to care about it, and about what Alberto himself said. And
far from a drizzle falling on her, their talk seemed like a shower of grey, greasy ashes; which no amount of shaking would ever throw off.

Perhaps, Benjamin thought, I really am getting too old to spend my summers with Meg. And perhaps I’ve really had, for far too long, a ridiculously idealized vision of her. A vision which had been implanted in him when he had been a young, graceless, unloved boy who had seen in his baby sister the only thing good or beautiful about his entire life; and who had never really allowed his feelings for her to develop in any way. Which would explain why he felt that the month they spent together was such an unreal, fabulous time. Because it was a time in which he reverted entirely to his childhood; when myths and monsters had been real.

Perhaps, he told himself, Meg is just a very ordinary girl. Very nice, of course, but still—very ordinary …

*

If he felt himself growing apart from Meg, Meg obviously felt it too; and in the late afternoon of that fifth day, she told him that she was sending Alberto back to Rome tomorrow.

‘Oh,’ Benjamin said. And then, feeling guilty, he pouted, and added ‘you don’t have to, you know. I mean I quite like him.’

Meg smiled. ‘Yes, I know you do. But I just think we should be alone together for a bit. Don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Benjamin said, his eyes watering with gratitude. But he wasn’t sure if he meant it. For with Alberto there, he had some sort of excuse for being bored with Meg. If he was bored with her after Alberto had gone …

Oh but he wouldn’t be. He couldn’t be, he told himself.

That evening Alberto took Meg into Gaeta for a farewell dinner. Benjamin was invited as well; but he refused, saying thank you, but he really preferred to stay home. He felt like writing something.

He did, too; but he didn’t write. Instead, at nine o’clock he set off to walk into town himself …

He wanted to test himself. Because, he reasoned, if he looked at the servicemen and the castle in the light of his theory that perhaps he was getting, as it were, over Meg, then surely they wouldn’t have the effect on him they had had the other night. If Meg was just an ordinary girl, with whom he was spending an ordinary holiday—as millions of people spent ordinary holidays with ordinary wives or husbands or sisters or brothers—then there was no need to feel that the servicemen were intruders in an enchanted world he had created, or that the prisoner was an Evil Spirit who presided over it.

If, on the other hand—but he would see, he told himself, as he walked along the road towards the town, that was dark against the still just light evening sky. He would see.

It took him just over half an hour to get there; and as he started to climb the narrow, winding streets, that all seemed to lead inexorably up to and around the castle, he stayed as far as possible in the shadow of walls. He tried to regulate his breathing. He tried to step as quietly as possible.

He felt like a young man off to visit a brothel for the first time …

Meg was just an ordinary girl, he told himself. Just an ordinary girl who happened to be his sister. Meg was just an ordinary girl, he repeated.

And whether it was because he was keeping so tight a
rein on himself, or because there were a lot of cars driving too fast up those narrow streets and he had to take care not to get run over, or even because tonight there didn’t seem to be any American servicemen about, by the time he actually reached the castle, and stood beneath its great ramparts and looked back down the coast towards the villa, and down over the main part of the town and the port, which lay on the other side of the hill, he told himself that he was passing his test brilliantly. For of course there was nothing disturbing about the American Fleet having a base here, and of course there was nothing sinister—nothing hugely, deeply Evil—about the presence of a war criminal in this fortress towering over him. Indeed, the presence of the Americans was almost reassuring, and the presence of the Nazi—positively picturesque. Sure he was, if one liked, the Horror. But he was locked up, wasn’t he? Guarded. And while he was locked up—then holidays were possible. Holidays, and lying doing nothing in the sun, and laughter, and drinking wine, and dancing, and having sex … It even added an extra touch of piquancy to these activities. For couldn’t all the tourists in the place
congratulate
themselves just that little bit more for all the pleasures they were indulging in, when they knew that near, ah very near—and possibly, enviously, watching them—was a man who couldn’t indulge in any of them, a man who had had his chance and had, appallingly, misused it? Yes … He was that needed touch of sourness, which really made one appreciate the sweetness of the feast.

And so thinking, and feeling happier and more free than he could remember feeling for ages—if ever—Benjamin plunged down the hill towards the main part of the town, telling himself that he really deserved a drink; and possibly even an ice cream …

The other night had been, he decided, a final blow from the malevolent world of his childhood dreams and fears. It had been a blow that had nearly floored him; but having survived it, he was free. He was free …

Dear Meg, he thought, she really was a sweet girl. But he wasn’t in the slightest degree responsible for her any more; she was quite capable of taking care of herself, and he really didn’t need her any longer as a guard against his own pomposity and falsity. If he couldn’t keep himself in order, then no one could. And it was folly, dangerous folly, to expect anyone else to. In fact, on the pretext of feeling responsible for Meg, he had felt he wasn’t responsible for himself. Well, that was over now. Of course he would always love and care for Meg, and he hoped he’d always be able to spend some part of the year with her. But he no longer felt any obsessive, unreasonable, other-worldly love for her. Till now he had always had a sentimental, romanticized sketch of her in his head; in future he would keep a more life-like, naturalistic portrait.

My God, he thought, as he sat down at a table of some bar near the waterfront, ordered a whisky and a vanilla ice cream, poured some of the whisky over the ice cream and started greedily, to guzzle it up with a spoon; I’ve grown up. I’ve matured. And now, surely, I’ve reached the peak of my powers. Now, at last, I’ve eliminated my one blind spot. Now my vision of the world is complete; my view total, clear, and unobstructed. And from now on, wherever I am in the world, in America, in Europe, in Africa, Australia, Asia or India, I need never feel lost, or helpless, or a fake. I have attained—myself!

In his jubilance, over the next half hour Benjamin ordered three more whiskies, and three more ice creams.

And yet, just as he felt that his happiness could grow
no greater, and staring out over the warships in the harbour with eyes that were no longer hurt, or accusing, or
sorrowful
, but benign, approving and blessing, he told himself that there could be no more soothing balm to his sensitive soul than this soft summer night, this sitting here now, in a crowded bar, slightly drunk and with traces of ice cream round his thick soft lips, a fly, as it were, plopped into the ointment.

And thought it wasn’t a particularly menacing fly—merely taking the form of a dark-haired, crew-cut young American Lieutenant who had been reading a book at a nearby table and now suddenly got up, came over, and said ‘Excuse me, are you Benjamin Thomas?’—it was enough to throw Benjamin into a panic for a second, to make him forget for a minute or two all his newly discovered maturity, and to make him realize after that that even if he had, as he had so grandly put it a little while ago, grown up and attained himself, that attainment was still a very precarious affair that could quite easily be upset.