The Pregnant Widow (17 page)

“And he played his part.”

“He played his part. A very determined little guy, Adriano. And it was all kind of nuts. Why not talk about it? Find a form of words. Maybe even joke about it. Christ, I don’t know.”

“Yeah.” Yeah, he thought. Laugh about it: in case Adriano started getting a complex. “Then drinks.”

“Then drinks. Both girls asked for whisky. Unusual, no? I sat between them on the sofa and I could feel their hearts beating. Both their hearts. Ah. Here are the inamoratos.”

They came to a halt. The two monks were striding down the narrow trail towards them on sandalled, skirted feet, talking, turning, nodding.
Buon giorno. Buon giorno
. They moved on through the scrub and the jagged outcrop, concernedly gesturing, but with hidden hands.

“Ah, they’re
so
in love. I had ten minutes with Luchino,” said Whittaker. “He gave me a wise smile, and we talked. Or he did.”

“Adriano was born in 1945.”

“Yes. The saddest story. Adriano was born in 1945 … On the way back, in the jeep, no one said a word. Except Adriano. The usual stuff. Hang-gliding smash-ups. Rafting spills …
Incubo.”

Which meant
nightmare
. Whittaker said,

“He was tremendously precise, Luchino. Very uh, condensed. Not rehearsed exactly. Crystallised. He’d found a form of words.”

“Can you remember any of it?”

“Oh yes. He said,
If, God forbid, Adriano should die before I do, then at last, in his coffin, my son will be as other men are.”

“He did, did he.”

“And this.
Not a moment passes without my praying for such episodes of joy as he will ever experience. Moments of love and life. Heaven defend the angels of mercy who grant him as much.”

“… Did you tell Scheherazade all that?”

It was, without any doubt, the saddest story. A story from another genre, another way of doing things. Social realism had failed to hold. And what was the form of words?

The child was conceived in May, 1944. And for all but the first and last few days of her pregnancy Adriano’s mother was in prison. The crime she was guilty of was being married to her husband. Luchino had been drafted into what they were calling the New Army, Mussolini’s New Army; and Luchino evaded it, this draft, with his wife’s blessing; they both feared, with good reason (according to Whittaker), that Luchino would sooner or later be trucked off to a labour camp in the Reich.
Lucia was adamant
, said Luchino.
We knew—everyone knew—that the worst possible prison was less lethal than the best possible camp. What we didn’t know was that Adriano was alive inside her
. Tybalt was born in 1950. And Lucia died in 1957, when Adriano was twelve.

So Keith was sad about that. To give him some credit (which he will soon be needing), I can say that Keith was duly harrowed by his imaginings of the enwombed Adriano. Fully fifteen years later, in 1984, when he saw his first child on the paediatrician’s monitor, delightedly busying itself like a newt in a millpond, all ashiver with festive and apparently humorous curiosity, Keith’s first thought was of Adriano and his hunger: the hunger of the enwombed Adriano. The tiny ghost and his face of pain. And this pain would clothe him for the rest of his life. Four foot ten. Five foot six could make a semi-educated guess at four foot ten. And how
near
the war was …

So Keith understood why the girls cried. But now the rules had been rewritten, and the generic proprieties no longer obtained. The question had to be asked again. What were heroines allowed to do?

Y
ou’re very gloomy. Come on, you should be happy to oblige.”

With gloomy couples, in gloomy weather, whole days pass like this. With gaps, mugs of coffee, silences, brief disappearances, cups of tea, yawns, vacancies … Later on, Lily and Keith would have to go down to the village and
represent the castello:
Oona had signed them up for some ceremonial jumble sale at Santa Maria.

“I don’t mind that,” he said. “Except it means going to church. No, I’m depressed about Tom Thumb.”

“Don’t call him Tom Thumb.”

“Okay. I’m depressed about Adriano. Were you expecting his dad to be a—to be a bit on the short side?”

“I expected, I don’t know, someone below average. A titch. Like you. Not a giant. And then the giant brother. That’s when she melted. You know how soft-hearted she is.”

Like a dream
, said Whittaker. All this is like a dream. He said,
“Will
she, d’you think?”

“Well. Two birds with one stone. A lovely boost for him, and it’ll stop her being desperate. She’ll feel her way into it.”

Keith lay on the bed—he lay on the bed with
Emma
. Lily was undressing for the shower: not a lengthy operation. She leant towards him and slid down her bikini bottoms with her thumbs. Over the weeks, the parent star was daubing Lily to its taste, the flesh browner, the hair blonder, the teeth whiter, the eyes bluer. She kicked off her flip-flops and said abruptly,

“Who fucks Fanny?”

“What? No one fucks Fanny.” They were resuming their discussion of
Mansfield Park
. Keith tried to concentrate—to concentrate on the world he knew. With a show of liveliness (talking was better than thinking), he said, “She’s a heroine, Lily, and heroines aren’t allowed to do that. Anyway. Who’d
want
to fuck Fanny?”

“The hero. Edmund.”

“Well, Edmund, I suppose. He marries her, after all. I suppose he gets round to it in the end. He
is
the hero.”

In her green satin housecoat, Lily sat herself at the dressing table with her back to the three mirrors. She took up a cardboard nail file and said, “So you don’t fancy Fanny.”

“No. Mary Crawford’s more the thing. She’s a goer too.”

“How can you tell?”

“There are ways, Lily. Mary’s talking about admirals, and she makes a joke about
vices
and
rears
. In Jane
Austen …
But
Mansfield Park
’s not like the others. The villains are Visions and the goodies are Duds. Resurgence of old values. Jane becomes anti-charm. It’s a very confused novel.”

“And there aren’t any fucks.”

“No. There are.
Mansfield Park
’s got
two
fucks. Henry Crawford fucks Maria Bertram. And Mr. Yates fucks her sister Julia. And he’s an Honourable.”

“What were
they
drugged with?”

“That’s a good question. I don’t know. Unloving parents. Boredom.”

“Scheherazade’s drugging herself with pity.”

He thought this was true. The Adriano project had become a form of social work or community service. “Sex as a good deed. Yeah. Tell that to Jane Austen.”

“She thinks about him growing up with Tybalt. And then Tybalt overtaking him. Tybalt growing. Swelling into this great towering god. She wishes …”

In fact they could hear her in the intervening bathroom—the taps, the quick tread.

“If only she’d met Tybalt first. She could fuck him. But she can’t. She’s got to fuck Tom Thumb instead. And she thinks she’s found a way.”

So Lily whispered, and stared. And was gone, out of the door and down the steps in her robe.

And Keith attempted to return to Emma, and Miss Bates, and the life-altering picnic on Box Hill.

“You know what they looked like?” said Lily, reappearing with one towel swathed around her and another twirled up in a cone on her head. “Tybalt and Adriano? When they stood there at the bar side by side? They looked like a bottle of Scotch and a miniature. The same brand and the same label. The bottle and the miniature.”

Lily was now getting dressed. All was familiar to him. Familiar, and irrational, like the thoughts that bracket sleep. Was her flesh just the clothing of her blood, her bones? Then she sat at the table before the three mirrors, to dress her face, the eyes in violet, the cheeks in rouge, the lips in pink. He said,

“Should you tong your hair when it’s wet? Are you sure? … Tybalt
would
be six foot six, wouldn’t he. Not five foot eleven or anything like that.”

“Actually I admire Scheherazade’s attitude. She’s trying her best to be positive. She thinks she can see her way to some sort of dirty weekend. The kind where you never go out. Or even get up. So they’re never perpendicular at the same time.”

“All right, Lily. Describe the horizontal weekend.”

Keith listened with a wandering mind … Adriano would drive her to the capital and park near—or preferably under—one of its premier hotels; adducing discretion, Scheherazade would proceed alone to the booked suite; there she would bathe, and perfume and moisten herself, and lay her long body, coated in some deliquescent negligee, on the white sheets—for him! for Adriano! The man himself would then dramatically appear; standing before the bed, perhaps, he would reach with lingering fingers for the furled bow that secured his white slacks, and, with a stern smile …

“After that,” said Lily, “you just use room service. Nothing in public, where they’re both standing up. It’s that that makes her die of self-consciousness. She’s ashamed of herself, but there it is. She keeps thinking about what
he’s
thinking about. And she gets the creeps.”

Keith agreed that it wouldn’t be any good if she got the creeps.

“Her attitude’s this. If she fancies Tybalt so much, then she must fancy Adriano. Sort of. And anyway. She’s getting more and more desperate.” Lily rose to her feet and smoothed her hands floorward. “Come on. It’s time.”

And he thought suddenly, This is the world I know, this is my place, among the wide-awake—with her. He rolled off the bed saying, “I’ve been meaning to tell you. You look really lovely, Lily. And we won’t break up. We’ll stay together. You and me.”

“Mm. Mm. I suppose you’re in love with
her
now.”

“Who?”

“Emma.”

“Oh, definitely. She’s a bit flash, Emma, but I fancy her, I admit.
Clever, handsome, and rich
. It’s a start.”

“Ah, but has she got big tits? … Does Jane Austen
say
if they’ve got big tits?”

“Not in so many words. Or not yet. Any moment now she’ll probably say,
Emma Woodhouse had big tits
. But not yet.”

“You said, you said Lydia Bennet had big tits. The one that runs off with the soldier.”

“Well she has. Or a big arse anyway. Catherine Morland has big tits. Jane Austen more or less tells you that. It’s in code. See, Lydia’s the tallest and youngest sister—and she’s
stout
. That’s code for a big arse.”

“And what’s code for big tits?”

“Consequence
. When Catherine’s growing up she gets
plumper
and her
figure gains consequence. Consequence
—that’s code for big tits.”

“Maybe it’s simpler than that. The code. Maybe
plump
is tits and
stout
is arse.”

Keith said that she could very well be right.

“So Scheherazade’s plump, and Gloria’s stout. But you wouldn’t call Junglebum stout exactly, would you.”

“Junglebum? No. But words change, Lily. Arses change.”

“Listen to him. First it was all moral patterning. And felt life. Then it was all drugs and fucks. Now it’s all tits and arses. Hang on. I’ve got one. Hysterical Sex and the Single Girl. With Natalie Wood. That’s a proper one.”

“No, Lily. That’s not a proper one.” He thought for a moment and said, “Hysterical Sex Story. With Ali MacGraw. That’s a proper one.”

“But she died. And anyway, we hated it.”

“I know we hated it. Is Tom Thumb coming to dinner?”

“Don’t call him that. Yes. By helicopter.”

“Christ, I’m going to talk to him about this. The sheep are just about halfway back to normal.”

“Talk to Scheherazade. She says she loves to think of Adriano flying free …”

Keith said, “You know, I reckon that’s how he pulls, Adriano. If four foot ten doesn’t do it on its own, he takes them to his dad’s and wheels out Tybalt.”

“… 1945’s the key. The war’s the key. Then she can tell herself she’s doing it for the troops.”

“For the troops?” he said with a crack in his voice. “But he was on the wrong side!”

“What?”

“Italy was an Axis power. So Tom Thumb was a fascist.” Keith went on to impart the two remaining facts in his possession about Italy and the Second World War. “Mussolini introduced the goose step. And
when they finally strung him up, he was in a German uniform. Nazi to the last.”

“Calm down … And don’t tell Scheherazade all that.”

T
he evening began noisily enough. First, the grinding turmoil of Adriano’s rotors. And then they were all heckled and barracked off the west terrace, in the rosy dusk, by the screams of the sheep. But dinner was in fact strangely quiet—or did he mean quietly strange? Whittaker, Gloria, and Keith, facing Lily, Adriano, and Scheherazade. Adriano, then, was not at the head of the table, but he seemed to lead the talk, with his sense of entitlement fully refreshed, saying,

“We clinched the championship with a bitterly fought victory in Foggio. Yet more silverware for our trophy room! Now soon we face the rigours of pre-season training. I’m chafing to begin.”

Keith, again, happened to know that Scheherazade had instructed Adriano to stop talking about love, which Adriano, ominously, had at once agreed to do. On the other hand, this left him short of conversation. So he spoke, at perhaps exorbitant length, about his rugby team,
I Furiosi
, and its reputation, in what was already the harshest of leagues, for exceptionally uncompromising play.

“Where do you go, Adriano? On the field.”

This was Scheherazade, who wore a new smile on her face. Meek, sorrowful, all-comprehending, all-forgiving. Keith listened on.

“Ah. My position. In the very centre of the fray.”

Adriano was the hooker, and did his work in the fulcrum of the pack. How he especially relished it, he said, at the commencement of a scrum, when the six heads came smashing together! It was normally the hooker’s job, Keith knew, to backheel the ball into the tread of the ten-legged melee that strained at his rear. But it was a different story, apparently, with
I Furiosi:
as the clash began, Adriano simply raised and crossed his little legs, so that the men behind him (the second row) could rake their studs down the knees and shins of the opposing front line. He said,