The Man Who Understood Women (15 page)

‘Nor I with you.’

‘It was obvious from the first that you would never master the violin. You have no ear.’

‘It was not proficiency on the violin I was after.’

‘I needed the money.’

I looked round the room, not having considered her
desperate
for funds.

‘My husband was a lawyer.’

Was.

‘Barristers don’t earn much, when recently called, not even when they’re working.’ She glanced at the ceiling as I had watched her do so many times. ‘It’s a year since Basil worked. He’s been ill. We knew there was nothing … At first I went out to work …’

It seemed a lifetime since the Bayswater Road.

‘… then I didn’t want to leave him for so long. I put the advertisement in. You were my only pupil.’

Of all budding violinists in London, I.

‘Last night he died. That was his favourite concerto. I’ve taken your money under false pretences.’

Her secret was out. Mine, fortunately, she seemed not to have heard.

We live in Sussex now, in a little house from the back of which you have a clear view of the Downs.

In our sitting room there are real chairs and rugs, books and busts: Bach, the master of counterpoint; Chopin, who knew the precise meaning of the piano; Beethoven with his prodigal architectural sense; Wagner with his genius for orchestration.

They have mellowed with the years. I, too, though not my love for Hermione.

We do not talk of music much, nor of the Bayswater Road, but sometimes, usually on summer nights, Hermione takes out her violin, the only child she has, and plays.

She looks at me and we do not know whether to laugh or cry.

Sleeping Beauty

1968

Because it was almost September, the wind, temperate though it was, started drifting in from the Adriatic each evening towards six o’clock. The first tendrils of its soft embrace sent Franco, steel-muscled in his white shorts, to his sunset task of lowering and securing the umbrellas of those who had left the beach, shaking and stacking mattresses and retrieving forsaken pages of
Die Welt, Corriere della Sera
, and the
New York Times
.

San Rimano, exceedingly chic without being exclusively so, catered to every nationality. The Excelsior Hotel, for whose wide white beach, cabins, and comfort Franco and his wife, Rosetta, were personally responsible, was of the very highest order.

Already, most of the Italians had taken their high spirits and their ball games and departed in their Alfas and Lamborghinis for Genoa, Florence and Rome. A clutch of middle-aged, panama-hatted Americans waded knee-deep into the water daily, discussed ‘back home’, and waited for their coronary
thromboses to overtake them. The Dutch and the Germans were still at large, and a few English littered their cabanas with a variety of ill-assorted gear more suited to a safari than to the daily fifty-yard traverse from hotel to shore. The French, with their infinitesimal bikinis and bottles of suntan oil, travelled lightest of all. Only one, at this evaporating end of the season, remained at the Excelsior.

She was very tall, very slim and very beautiful, no longer in the first flush of youth. Leaning a little backwards, as if once she had been a model, she had sauntered down to the beach at the beginning of the previous week, dressed in tan linen slacks and clinging black silk shirt; around her head she wore a canary-yellow scarf. She had smiled at Rosetta but had not asked for a cabana. She had merely arranged with Franco for a mattress, and to this she made her way at exactly the same hour each morning, dressed in precisely the same clothes. Her hair was touched with grey. Prematurely, Rosetta conjectured. Her figure was that of a woman no more than thirty.

Each morning, she followed the same routine.
Having
greeted Rosetta and Franco, she ignored everyone else, stepped out of the slim pants, which she folded with expertise, whipped the black top over her head, and hung them both neatly over the spokes of the umbrella. This procedure left her in an apology for a yellow bikini, which matched exactly the scarf about her head and which drew, not in the least surreptitiously, some dozen pairs of eyes. Her last chore was the removal of the scarf itself, which was tossed into the wicker basket beside her mattress.

Running pink-painted fingernails through the greying hair, she would walk unhurriedly and elegantly into the sparkling sea and, when she could no longer stand, swim in a leisurely,
effortless
crawl until she seemed almost to disappear. As languidly as she had gone, she would return, materialising from the water unconcerned about the two sagging strips of her bikini and seemingly unperturbed by the rows of eyes now firmly fixed upon her. Back at her mattress, she would stand, legs slightly apart, comb the hair back from her face, retie the yellow scarf, rub oil into every particle of flesh uncovered by the two strips of canary cotton, apply a dash of scarlet lipstick to her wide,
beautiful
mouth, and when all was ready, spread a black towel on her mattress and lie down to sleep. By the time she awoke, the sun was usually high in the sky. The colour of her skin had
metamorphosed
over the days from honey blond to golden cognac.

It was Jasper who christened her the ‘Sleeping Beauty’, but Stephanie who fell in love. Theirs was the umbrella next to hers. Neither of them wearied of watching her turn from time to time from back to front, like some tender roll baking in the oven, without so much as opening her eyes. Occasionally, in her sleep she smiled with the wide scarlet mouth.

On the day of the disturbance, for which Stephanie blamed Jasper and Jasper blamed Stephanie, it was suffocatingly hot. By ten in the morning, the rays of the sun were pitiless.

The trouble began over the comic paper that had arrived that day from England. It belonged, by rights, to Stephanie, whom, at twelve, it intrigued immeasurably; it had been appropriated by Jasper, who, at fourteen, was not above enjoying it when
none of his friends was in sight. Stephanie was bored; she was also hot. Tiny drops of perspiration beaded her upper lip. She did not feel very well in the region of her stomach; also, she wanted to read her comic. She reached across to where Jasper lay idly happy on his mattress and grabbed at the paper.

Jasper tightened his hold.

‘Give it to me.’ Stephanie was whispering, anxious not to waken the Sleeping Beauty.

‘I’m not finished.’

‘It’s mine!’

‘You can have it in a minute.’

‘I want it now!’

‘Shut up.’

Stephanie made another grab. There were tears in her eyes.

‘Give it to me.’

Jasper folded one knee over the other indolently and
continued
reading.

The temperature, the tedium, and the unpleasant sensation in her stomach were too much for Stephanie. With one hand she pulled Jasper’s nose good and hard and with the other she snatched the comic.

Jasper howled with pain and rage; he also aimed a kick at his sister, which landed, unfortunately, in the already tender region of her navel. Stephanie lay face down on her mattress and howled.

Jasper saw that he had gone too far.

‘Look, I didn’t mean to kick you.’

The howling did not diminish.

‘I said I didn’t mean to kick you.’ Jasper looked around, embarrassed at the rumpus his sister was creating on the
torpid
beach.

‘You’ve woken the Sleeping Beauty,’ he whispered. ‘Can’t you belt up a bit? I’ve said I’m sorry.’

It was like talking to the shimmering air.

The Sleeping Beauty was now awake. She was also sitting up. She looked at Jasper and at Stephanie, still on her stomach, sobbing as if her heart would break.

‘Where is your mother?’ the Sleeping Beauty said.

‘We have lost her,’ Jasper said.

‘
Mon dieu
!’ The Sleeping Beauty leaped to her feet. ‘Franco! Franco!’

‘I mean,’ Jasper said, ‘she is dead.’

The Sleeping Beauty sat down again on the edge of her
mattress
and faced Jasper. ‘Who is looking after you, then?’

‘Our father.’

She looked vaguely about her. ‘And where is your father?’

‘In Basle.’

The Sleeping Beauty sighed.

‘He will be here at the end of the week,’ Jasper said helpfully.

‘But it is only Monday!’

‘We are quite capable of looking after ourselves for a few days,’ Jasper said with dignity. He followed the glance of the Sleeping Beauty towards the shaking form of his sister, who still whimpered into the mattress.

The Sleeping Beauty turned her over gently. ‘Something hurts you?’ she said.

‘She’s just mad because I swiped her comic paper,’ Jasper said. ‘I said I was sorry.’

Stephanie gave him a scathing look and wiped her tears on her beach towel. ‘I have a stomach ache,’ she said to the
Sleeping
Beauty, who was now sitting beside her.

‘You eat last night the zucchini?’ the Sleeping Beauty asked. ‘I have something for you in my room.’

They left Jasper on the beach, with sole access to the comic, which he no longer wanted to read. He had promised his father to look after Stephanie. He had failed.

When the Sleeping Beauty returned, she was alone. ‘Your sister is sleeping in my suite,’ she said to Jasper. ‘Too much sun and zucchini. When she wakes up, she will feel better.’

Jasper, looking glumly out to sea, did not answer.

‘You also have the stomach ache?’ the Sleeping Beauty said.

‘No.’

‘What have you?’

‘Nothing. I shouldn’t have teased her. I promised to look after her.’

The Sleeping Beauty told him that it was not his fault at all, but a combination of the heat and the strange food that was responsible for upsetting his sister. ‘Tell me about your mother,’ she said, wishing to distract him.

‘I told you. She is dead. She was very beautiful and always laughing.’ He looked sideways, making a mental comparison, which did not escape unnoticed. ‘Then she became very ugly and did not laugh at all.’

‘It must have been sad for you.’

Jasper shrugged. ‘I was at school.’ It was Mrs Giddins, their housekeeper, who now packed his suitcase; sometimes half the things were missing or unmarked. ‘It’s different for Steph.’

The eyebrows went up questioningly.

‘She’s a girl.’

‘And your father?’

‘He’s the worst of the lot. He sometimes goes to the city in a blue suit with a brown tie; he’s colourblind, you see.’

‘I see.’

All that day, Stephanie slept. The next, she remained in the Sleeping Beauty’s suite, fed on bread sticks and frequent small drinks of Fiuggi water. By Wednesday, she was quite cured and appeared her normal self, although a trifle pale, on the beach.

During the time that his sister had been indisposed, Jasper had struck up a friendship with the Sleeping Beauty. She was not prepared to lose very much sleep in pursuit of their
intimacy
, but in her waking moments they discovered a mutual interest in cars, of which she had two, a Buick Riviera and a Ferrari Spyder, and an appreciation of Mario Mariotti, who was to sing in the hotel that weekend. She did not talk much about herself, except to say that her business was with clothes and that each summer she took two weeks off to lie in the sun like a sand lizard and do absolutely nothing.

‘Then I am sorry Stephanie has disturbed you,’ Jasper said, when she revealed this indulgence.

‘It is nothing. I adore children. And I have none of my own.’

It was at that moment that Jasper conceived his plan. He
hugged it to himself all day and didn’t reveal it to Stephanie until that evening after they left the beach.

While the Sleeping Beauty slept on, they packed their belongings and exchanged a few friendly remarks with Franco, who always smiled with Rosetta over the bearing and poise of the fourteen-year-old Englishman.

‘I think a little drink before we change,’ Jasper said as they reached the hotel. ‘Don’t you agree, Steph?’

‘I’m gasping.’ She sat down in the shade on one of the white wrought-iron chairs on the wide terrace, where the band played beneath the stars nightly.

Dominic, white-coated, tray in hand, bowed low before them.

‘Good evening, Dominic,’ Jasper said. ‘I’ll have a Negroni.’

Dominic winked. ‘Certainly, sir. And for the young lady?’

‘I’ll stick to Fiuggi,’ Stephanie said.

‘Steph,’ Jasper said, when Dominic had come and gone with his alcohol-less Negroni and Stephanie’s mineral water, ‘I have an idea.’

‘I’ve already had it.’

‘You can’t have.’

‘You aren’t the only one allowed to have ideas.’

‘But I’ve only just had this one.’

‘Well, I had it yesterday.’

‘Perhaps it isn’t the same.’

‘It’s the same.’

‘How do you know?’

Stephanie looked at him. ‘Is it about the Sleeping Beauty?’

Jasper looked at her in amazement.

Stephanie said, ‘I think she’s absolutely divine. But that’s not to say that Father will.’

‘Father and I,’ Jasper said, ‘have similar tastes in women.’ With that, he called for another Negroni.

On Thursday and Friday, they scarcely took their eyes off her; it was as if, like the fairy godmother, they were afraid she would disappear. She remained very much in evidence,
however
, her golden-cognac tan deepening nicely into tawny port.

When their father arrived from Basle on Friday night, they had decided to play it cool. They told him of
Stephanie
’s malaise and how a kind Frenchwoman on the beach had looked after her with such solicitude. They phrased it in such a way that he imagined her, as they had intended him to, as a motherly figure with flabby arms and a moustache,
surrounded
by a brood of children. They were glad the Sleeping Beauty did not appear in the dining room that night and their father’s first sight of her was on the beach.

They were established with their extra mattress well before the customary time of the Sleeping Beauty’s arrival.

‘I hope we have no one noisy next to us,’ their father said, unfolding the
Financial Times
. ‘I’m looking forward to a little peace and quiet.’

‘No, only the woman who looked after Stephanie,’ Jasper said and, before his father could say a word, asked, ‘What is the price of gold?’

When she arrived and stood beside them, hanging up her neatly folded clothes, Jasper whispered to his father, behind
the newspaper, ‘I think we had better introduce you. After all, she was terribly good to Steph.’

His father growled. ‘If you insist. One has, I suppose, to be polite.’ He lowered his newspaper, and the pink pages
fluttered
unheeded to the soft white sand.

Jasper closed one eye at Stephanie.