The Italian Girl (11 page)

Disturbed, routed by her, I said, ‘I hope at least you were sensible and had the thing done well –’

‘Oh, the very best! Someone lent me some money.’

‘Mr Hopgood, I suppose. And how does
he
feel about it –?’ I could hear the tones of age and envy in my voice, but I could not check them. I could almost have put my head in my hands and wept with rage and sadness at it all. And the thing that mattered most, that she had consented to end a human life, was already being swept from me, tiny and lost as the embryo itself.

‘Hopgood –?’ She looked at me for a moment without understanding. Then she began to laugh wildly. ‘Oh, Charlie Hopgood, bless him! He was a complete fiction. I just invented a name on the spur of the moment.’

‘You mean – it was someone else?’

‘How quick you are, Uncle Edmund! Yes, it was someone else, and guess who!’

I rose to my feet and she sat down and crossed her legs, adjusting her skirt at the knee. I could see now that she was shivering with emotion.

I groped. ‘I don’t know, Flora –’

‘Look about the house, look about you. There’s a pretty boy, a pretty little billy goat –’

‘My God, Levkin. Surely not. You don’t mean David Levkin – he was the father –?’

‘Oh, how
stupid you
are! Yes, of course. Wasn’t it obvious? Why can’t you guess and understand? And why do you have to say everything out in that crude way? You’re so brutal to me. Men are all so brutal and beastly. Look at my father. He’s just like a great monster, a rhinoceros or something, ugly, violent, horrible. And you’re just the same …’ Her voice was high and tearful. She put her hands to her face, one covering her mouth, the other with fingers spread on her brow as if to stop her head from bursting open.

I looked down at her strained, pressing fingers. I felt for a moment almost faint with rage. David Levkin. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She whipped her hands away. Her face was red and wet and she almost bared her teeth at me. ‘Why should I? Have you any right to the truth? You never come here, I hardly know you. I told you because I had to tell somebody, and much good you were! But I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t tell Father, with all your namby-pamby ideas. And I didn’t want Father to break David’s neck.’

‘Why are you telling me now?’ I spoke coolly, but I was all a confused fire within. I could well understand her fears about Otto.

‘Oh, it somehow doesn’t matter now. Now I’m all right –’

‘Well, don’t worry, I won’t tell.’

‘I don’t care what you do, Uncle Edmund. You’re of no further interest to me. Oh, you don’t like it, do you, I can see you don’t like it! But you can take yourself away now. There’s nothing more to stay for. The show’s over. You’ve been living in a monastery, haven’t you? Now your head’s turned because you’ve seen some real women. Well, go back to it, go back to your crippled life. Leave real living to people who are able for it.’

She got up and turned her back on me and began to powder her face, peering into the little heart-shaped mirror on her dressing-table. Her full tartan skirt swung up impertinently like a bell as she leaned forward.

I stood there like an ape with my hands hanging. I could not leave her like this. Her words hurt exceedingly. But I felt rather as if I had to beg her pardon for having made her utter such ugliness. ‘Flora, I quite realize –’

‘Oh, don’t be such a
bore,’
she said in a tired voice, busy with lipstick. ‘No one wants you here. Go home and play with your little bits of wood.’

I stared at the white sleeves of the blouse which she was wearing under the pinafore dress. The sleeves were pushed up to the elbow, revealing her forearms, round and biscuit-coloured. I saw this with the clarity of a beloved detail in a picture, it seemed to detach itself in my mind from the appalling medley of anger and self-abasement. Hardly knowing what I did I stepped forward and took hold of her arm. ‘Flora –’

I must have gripped her harder than I intended, for she winced and gave a little cry, jerking away from me. She moved her other hand as if to strike me, or perhaps just to push me away, and I caught it in flight like a bird and crumpled it in my palm. ‘Flora, please –’ I wanted simply to make her still, to console her, to stop her from speaking to me so harshly, to ease the pain that made her do so. But now something quite else seemed to be happening. As I saw her furious face close to mine, saw her tongue and her teeth, she kicked me painfully in the shin, I released her hand and slid my arm round her waist and drew her so tightly up against me that she could no longer struggle. As I felt her become limp in my arms I lowered my face with a groan into her hair which was becoming undone and falling down on to my sleeve. I stared at the long strands of golden-red hair on my dark sleeve. It was another detail.

There was a sound behind me. As I let Flora go, setting her as it were gently upon her feet, I was aware without turning my head that David Levkin was standing in the doorway. Then there was a furious dishevelled flurry like a wild cat escaping from a room, and Flora had darted past Levkin out of the door. Levkin closed the door behind her and stood looking at me. I sat down on the bed and covered my face with my hands.

11. A Modern Ballet

Now with one hand I controlled my heart which was striking my side like a desperate animal. With the other I smoothed back my hair and rubbed my face over. I felt as if my face must have altered, must have become distorted with chagrin and shame. For a moment I was hardly aware of Levkin.

When my breathing was calmer and I had rubbed my face into some sort of order, I looked up at him. He was in the same attitude by the door, one hand on the door handle, the other holding up his white unbuttoned shirt at the neck. The broad full lips were soft and amused, but the eyes had almost vanished in wrinkles of sardonic wariness.

At last he said, ‘Well, Uncle Edmund, how is it with you?’

I stared at him in silence and he moved a little nervously away from the door, placing a chair between myself and him. ‘Well, Uncle, what price Sir Galahad now, what price Saint Edmund the Confessor –?’

‘So it was you,’ I said.

‘It was me. Lucky, lucky me.’

‘Otto trusted you.’ I spoke softly. I was aware now of the blessed rage within me, a sacred rage purging my shame. ‘He trusted you, and –’

‘Lord Otto is deaf and blind. He has other fish to fry. As for you, why should I submit to you? Why should I not draw your blood a little? You were so beautifully caught, Uncle Edmund, were you not? But no –
you
shall reproach
me.
Speak daggers, daggers, I deserve it!’ He laughed, and with a dramatic gesture threw wide his shirt which was unbuttoned to the waist. Then he moved, swinging the chair with him, as I rose to my feet.

‘You don’t seem to know what you’ve done –’ I choked over the words. I wanted to cover him with leeches and scorpions, I wanted to make him cringe and whimper.

He skipped before me like a bland gay child. ‘Oh, but I do, I do! What does it say in the gospels? “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” I am that man, I am that man!’ He gabbled the quotation delightedly. ‘But what else does it say in the gospels, dear Uncle? “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.”’ He danced gleefully behind his chair, edging a little towards the window.

‘You must leave this house,’ I said. This at least was something I could impose upon him. ‘I can’t think how you can have the impertinence to remain here after –’

‘Uncle, Uncle no coarse language – remember, we are in a lady’s boudoir!’ He dodged back again towards the door, still interposing the chair between us. As he moved, he picked up something white from the bed, flourished it in front of me and then half buried his face in it, peering at me over the top. I saw that what he held was Flora’s white flimsy nightdress. I began to tremble.

‘Fair flowers and ripe berries, dear uncle. We like them both, don’t we, we enjoy them both. And when we fall we know where we like to fall. Why even you – or do I wrong you, Uncle dear! Perhaps you don’t really like girls? Perhaps you prefer boys delicious milk-white boys as beautiful as angels? But no – you don’t really like anything at all, Uncle, not anything at all. And that is why you hate us, you hate to see us at it. Isn’t that it, Uncle Edmund?’ He spoke softly, peering at me now through a fringe of brown hair, his body immobile and taut, ready to leap.

I didn’t raise my voice. ‘Go away, Levkin, or I shall probably hit you.’ I was beginning to be frightened of the anger.

He half turned the door handle behind him, but he seemed delighted, fascinated by his power to enrage me. ‘Hit me then, beat me! If a man strike you on one cheek offer him the other. I offer you both cheeks, Uncle. I offer you – Ah!’

I moved slightly and he half opened the door, ready to dart out. His face was bland, broad, flattened with smiling mockery, his eyes were two gleaming exultant arcs. The nostrils arched with happy impertinence.

He went on softly, ‘And yet why should I consent to be chastised by you? Old rhino, old rhino! Oh yes, I was listening to it all at the door! I only came in because I could not see through the keyhole. And you were worth seeing, Uncle, you were! Here, take this. You might enjoy this, pawing it over in your stable!’ He threw the nightdress into my face.

I slapped the lacy stuff to the ground with one hand and reached for him with the other. My fingers touched his shirt as he eluded me, flying past and springing lightly on to the bed. He lifted the chair, pointing the legs towards me.

‘Ah, not here, not here,’ he said softly. His dishevelled shirt had partly emerged from his trousers and he was panting with excitement. ‘Not in Flora’s pretty room with all her little things. This is no place to play at rhinos. Outside if you will. But make no mistake, I can wrestle and I would defend myself. Perhaps it would be delightful. But no, no. The one who will kill me will be Otto. And when that time comes I shall not resist him.’

I took one of the legs of the chair and pulled it away from him. Fortunately he let it go easily and then stood before me on the bed, slowly spreading his arms in an attitude of defenceless submission. The hot moment passed.

I felt incoherent, disgusted, wretched, I loathed him, I loathed myself. I wanted to end the scene cleanly somehow. I said, ‘I won’t tell Otto, but you must clear out.’

‘I will go when I am ready,’ he said. ‘My sister is well here. And do you want to drive Lord Otto insane? Oh, Edmund, Edmund, how I enjoy you! You are a buffoon just like your brother, but you don’t even know it! He at least, he knows that he is a perfectly ludicrous animal.’

‘I won’t tell Otto,’ I said, ‘but I will tell Isabel. And now –’

He laughed outrageously. ‘Oh, Isabel! She! No, no, it is too beautiful. No, she will tell
you
things, poor rhino, poor ox, she will goad you, she will drive you in harness! But I was forgetting, you are the Health Visitor, the General Inspector! Well, you shall know, you shall know. Yes, come and see Isabel. She will tell and tell.’

He gave a great leap from the bed and as he went by he tapped me lightly on the chest. I subsided abruptly into a chair. I could hear him now on the landing calling ‘Isabel! Isabel!’

12. Isabel Confesses

Isabel locked the door behind me and turned the gramophone down a little. ‘What was David shouting about?’ She looked plump and dishevelled in a shabby blue silk dressing-gown with the sleeves rolled up. She looked crumpled, sleepy, vague, a bit frightened. Perhaps she had been lying down. ‘What is it Edmund? You look rather mad too.’ She stared at me. Intimations of Wagner rumbled in the background.

‘Flora’s back,’ I said. I looked down at Isabel and felt myself indeed down-like and gaping.

‘I know. Whatever has David been doing to you, Edmund? He pushed you in through the door like a dog! No, you sit down, I’ll stand. I can’t sit still these days, I’m too nervous.’

I sat down on a fat embroidered stool which yelped under me. The high bright coronet of the wood fire subsided, bringing a musty fragrance and such a blaze of warmth in my back that I had to edge away. The room flickered with golden light. Isabel wandered among the furniture like a distraught nymph waist-deep in the reeds. She caressed her two forearms vigorously. The blue dressing-gown caught at surfaces and edges and she plucked it away with jerks of the knee.

‘Isabel, do you know about Flora?’

‘So you feel it your duty to tell me?’

‘So you know?’

‘That Flora was pregnant? Oh yes, yes.’

‘And did you, do you, know who it was that made her so?’

‘Yes. David Levkin. He’s probably listening at the door at this moment.’ She moved across and picked up a log of wood. The dry powdery bark dusted her sleeve and floated in the air.

‘But Isabel, you tolerated him in the house –’ I sneezed violently. The bark was like pepper.

‘How Victorian you are, Edmund. How could I turn him out? Besides the damage was done. Put that on the fire, would you.’

‘I can perfectly understand,’ I said, ‘that you should not have told Otto. Otto might go berserk. But oughtn’t you to have told Levkin to go? After all –’

‘Oh, do stop telling us what we ought to do. And do stop sneezing. It annoys me so much when people sneeze.’

‘Sorry, I’ve got a rather sensitive nose –’

‘Damn your nose. I know I rather encouraged you. You gave me a moment of hope. But it’s too much of a tangle really. Don’t ask any more, Edmund. It’s better not to know.’

She kicked her way to the mantelpiece and surveyed herself in the mirror, absently tapping her wedding ring against the marble. Then she picked up a jar of cold cream and began to smooth it into the skin under her eyes with little patting movements.

‘I’ve seen too much already,’ I said. ‘I can’t shut my eyes now. You realize that Flora has got rid of the child?’

Isabel moved impatiently and her gown brushed my knees. I got up hastily, trampled on the stool, and retreated to the other side of the rug.