The Takeover (11 page)

‘Pass the wine,’ said Hubert. Pauline was wearing a long lavender-blue dress of floating chiffon; Hubert wore a deep purple patterned shirt of transparent cotton with expensive-looking blue jeans; the smart dining-room had been opened and the silver and fine glasses brought out; a cold buffet of elegant rarities was laid on the sideboard.

Cuthbert, having tasted his chilled salmon mousse, looked at Pauline across the candlelit table and said, ‘Everything looks very sumptuous this evening.’

‘He means opulent,’ Hubert said, for no other reason than to be difficult.

‘It’s only a semblance of opulence,’ said Pauline, warily; she was evidently thinking that their golden windfall must inevitably reach a point of exhaustion.

‘But what is opulence,’ said Hubert, ‘but a semblance of opulence?’

‘Well,’ said Gerard, ‘I would say there is a very, very great difference.’

‘How ingenuous you are!’ said Hubert.

‘I don’t understand,’ said the young priest. ‘How?—ingenuous.…’

‘If you imagine,’ Hubert said, ‘that appearance may belie the reality, then you are wrong. Appearances
are
reality.’

‘Oh, come, Hubert,’ said Father Cuthbert. ‘Pauline has just said that you have here a semblance of opulence. “Semblance” was her word wasn’t it, Pauline?’

‘Yes, it was,’ said Pauline, ‘and Hubert knows what I mean.’

‘A vulgar concept,’ Hubert said. ‘Tonight we have opulence.’

‘But it might not be everybody’s idea of opulence,’ ventured Gerard. ‘I mean of course you’re making reality out to be something very subjective, aren’t you? People differ in their perceptions.’

‘Reality is subjective,’ said Hubert. ‘In spite of what your religion claims, I say that even your religion is based on the individual perception of appearances only. Apart from these, there is no reality.’

‘Try having a scientist agree with you,’ said Cuthbert, making little excited movements in his chair.

‘The more advanced scientists do agree with me; in fact they’re almost mystics,’ Hubert said. ‘As am I.’

‘Can you come to the sideboard?’ said Pauline. ‘Take your own plates and help yourselves.’

‘It looks delicious,’ said Gerard, following her to the sideboard. ‘And you look very nice in that gown, Pauline.’

‘It’s new,’ she said.

‘Is Maggie back from her holidays?’ Cuthbert meanwhile enquired softly of Hubert, as if treading a mined field.

But Hubert ignored the question, standing back and beckoning the guests towards the spread of cooked meats and the choiceworthy range of salads. When they were seated Hubert produced a different wine, recommending it with a grand and far-away voice.

It was mid-September and still the heat of summer hovered far into the nights of Rome and its surroundings. Tonight at Nemi there was a faint hill breeze, hardly enough to flicker the candles through the open doors of the dining-room balcony.

‘Delicious,’ said Cuthbert. ‘Delicious wine.’

‘Delicious,’ said Gerard.

‘And Maggie,’ Cuthbert plodded on, ‘…have you heard from her?’

‘Not a word,’ Pauline said, warming up to communicability which, with a little more wine, would presently become volubility. ‘We had a letter from her before she left Nemi. She told us all her movements up to the end of this month. She should have been in America at the moment but I believe she didn’t go. She’s still in Italy. She wants us to get out of this house by the end of September, but—’

‘Pauline!’ said Hubert. ‘Don’t you think you might be boring these learned Fathers with this trivial gossip?’

‘No, it isn’t boring at all,’ Cuthbert said.

‘Isn’t your chair comfortable, Cuthbert?’ Hubert said.

‘My chair? Oh, yes, thank you kindly, it’s quite comfortable, Hubert.’

‘Cuthbert very often motionizes,’ Gerard explained with well-wined pleasantness, ‘while verbalizing, depending upon the emotive force of the topic in its relation to the scope and limitations inherent in the process of verbalization.’

‘I see,’ said Hubert, inclining himself very slightly in aristocratic acknowledgement of this exposition and with the same movement lifting his glass of deep red wine. He sipped and looked at a point above Pauline’s head, as one who savours.

“Well, I wasn’t being boring,’ Pauline said. ‘I was only saying that Maggie and I’ve never seen her, mind you, I haven’t met her at all is simply impossibly spoilt. Too much money. She had a gentleman’s agreement with Hubert and—’

‘Maggie is not a gentleman,’ Hubert said, ‘and I find personalities a boring subject of conversation, Pauline, if you please.’

“What else is there to talk about?’ Pauline said. ‘Everyone reads the papers and we hear the news; I think it’s boring to discuss what everyone’s heard already. The point about Maggie is that she’s holding this threat over our heads while she’s sunning herself on some beach. We only have two weeks to go, and—’

‘Pauline, enough!’ Hubert said, loudly.

‘Maybe we could be of help?’ Cuthbert said. ‘We found Mary, her daughter-in-law, a very charming, human person. Could I have a word with her? Gerard was in Ischia with them the beginning of August, you know. He—’

‘Ischia—I thought they were going to Sardinia,’ Pauline said.

‘Maggie changed her plans,’ said Gerard. ‘I had an invitation from Mary to go study the surviving ecological legends of Ischia,’ Father Gerard said. ‘I stayed with them, it was very comfortable. And I must say that area is rich in legends of nature-worship. Mary listed for me many cases of surviving nature-practices and superstitions in that area. They’re devout Catholics, of course. I’m not saying anything against their faith; those peasants are great Catholics.’

‘But they worship the tree-spirits and the water-spirits,’ said Hubert.

‘No, no, I wouldn’t say worship. You’ve got it wrong. The Church continues to absorb many pagan nature-rituals because the Church is ecology-conscious.’

Pauline, who had been engaged in conversation with Cuthbert while the other priest was expounding all this to Hubert, suddenly broke in and, hurling the words across the table, said, ‘Hubert listen to this! Lauro, that Italian boy who was your secretary and works for the Radcliffes—well, he went to join them in Ischia and he’s sleeping with Mary
and
Maggie. What d’you think of that?’

‘Well, perhaps,’ said Cuthbert, bouncing in his chair, ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But, well, maybe don’t you think, Gerard? it’s something that Hubert and Pauline ought to know.’

Gerard, somewhat shaken, said hastily, ‘Why, yes, in confidence, of course. As I told Cuthbert on my return from Ischia, this state of affairs arises from an impression, as it was indicated to me by primary coadjunctive factors, that formed in that location with the Radcliffes. But still, as I said, I found Mary very intelligent to be with and very, very helpful. I think, in her case, it’s only a passing phase and that young Lauro should never have been allowed the freedom that he has. Mary was very helpful with her documentational listings.’ When he had finished this speech he looked at Pauline reproachfully, as if by her outburst she had been a confessor who had burst out of the confessional proclaiming the outrage of a penitent’s sins.

Pauline was not apparently concerned with his feelings. She was looking intently at Hubert. He looked back in aloof silence.

‘Gerard,’ said Father Cuthbert, ‘is really very perceptive; since he told me about it, I thought about it and I decided this is something that you ought to know, Hubert, because both Lauro and Maggie have been friends of yours.’

‘Personalities bore me,’ said Hubert. ‘I’ve spent too much of my life on perishable gossip. Cuthbert, let me change chairs with you; I can see that there’s really something wrong with yours.’ He got up and started moving his chair. Cuthbert looked bewildered.

‘It’s only a reflex of Cuthbert’s,’ said Father Gerard.

Hubert replaced his chair and before he sat down refilled their glasses. He said, ‘Gossip and temporal trivialities. Whereas the intellectual principle endures. Cuthbert, be intellectual, for God’s sake.’

Pauline took up her plate, holding it at arm’s length from her new dress, and moved to the sideboard for a second helping.

‘I thought you’d be interested, Hubert,’ said Cuthbert, getting up to follow Pauline.

Pauline said, ‘We’ve been hard at work all day. It’s nice to relax at night.’

‘Do you find it relaxing to think of Lauro busying himself with Maggie and Mary by turns?’ Hubert said.

The priests giggled coyly.

Pauline said, ‘I do.’

‘Then you have a sexual problem, my dear,’ Hubert said.

‘Whose fault is that?’ said Pauline.

‘Maybe we’d better keep off personalities, as Hubert suggests,’ Gerard said. ‘There was a lot of that going on in Ischia, I’m afraid.’

‘There always has been,’ Hubert said. ‘That’s where your studies in pagan ecology should begin. Copulation has always been part of the worship and propitiation of nature.’

‘Well, Christianity has given all that a very, very, new meaning,’ said Cuthbert.

‘To us,’ said Hubert, ‘who are descended from the ancient gods, your Christianity is simply a passing phase. To us, even the God of the Old Testament is a complete upstart and his Son was merely a popular divergence. Diana the huntress, the goddess of nature, and ultimately of fertility, lives on. If you poison her rivers and her trees she takes her revenge in a perfectly logical way. The God of the Christians and the Jews where’s the logic in him?’

‘Hubert,’ said Pauline, ‘you know I’m a Catholic. I don’t mind helping you but I won’t have my religion insulted.’

Father Cuthbert said, ‘Good, Pauline!’

‘My dear, I knew you would take it personally,’ Hubert said, ‘and you look adorable tonight in your new dress. Go and get the sherbet ice out of the refrigerator and mind your frock.’

When the visitors had left, greatly cheered by the wine and liqueurs, the pleasant food, the physical prettiness of the evening and Hubert’s exciting insults, Pauline went to change out of her new dress into a cotton nightdress in which she descended to join Hubert at the kitchen sink where he was stacking the dishes into the dish-washer. They started the machine buzzing, then Hubert poured whisky for both, and they sat at the kitchen table, sipping and sizing each other up for a silent while. Eventually Hubert said, ‘Lauro and Maggie. Lauro and Mary. When will it be Lauro and Michael?’

‘Just what I was wondering myself,’ Pauline said. ‘Only a few months ago I wouldn’t have thought of it. But now since being here alone with you, Hubert, and sharing the trouble, we seem to think the same thoughts. I feel there’s a real bond between us. An everlasting bond.’

‘Everlasting!’ said Hubert. ‘A bond, my dear Miss Thin, is not very far from bondage. Don’t frighten me, please.’

‘Well, Hubert, you don’t have to go back to calling me Miss Thin, suddenly, just at this moment. It’s not very nice of you after all we’ve been through.’

‘When I feel the bonds tightening, Miss Thin,’ said Hubert, ‘I break loose from them.’

‘All right, I’ll go away,’ said Pauline.

‘What have I done?’ said Hubert. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’

‘Nothing,’ said Pauline. ‘That’s the trouble. You’ve done nothing at all because you’re a confirmed queer. Proximity to a man who does nothing gets on one’s nerves after a time. I’m at the end of my tether and I’m leaving.’

‘Before one speaks of sex I should have thought one considered the aspect of love,’ Hubert said.

‘I’ve got a boy-friend in Brussels working for the Common Market,’ Pauline said. ‘I can go to Brussels and consider the aspect of love with him.’

‘Pauline, Pauline, how heartless you are! Love takes time,’ Hubert said. ‘And if you think you have a right to describe me as a queer when you don’t know the first thing about my physical inclinations, then you’ve got a stupid and a common mind. If I were to impart to you the erotic details of what goes on in my mind they would excite you but
per se
would consequently cease to excite me.’

Pauline, successfully perplexed by this collage of clues, replied sulkily, ‘Well, you once told me that you’d never slept with a woman; you said so yourself—’

‘Which is not to say I can’t.’

‘Well, if you haven’t, how do you know if you can?’

‘Have you ever eaten blubber?’

‘No,’ said Pauline, ready to be very annoyed.

‘Whale-blubber. I ate some once in a little fisherman’s cafe in Normandy. It was on the menu so I thought I’d try it,’ Hubert said. ‘It tasted all right—fat and fishy—but I suppose there might be ways in which one could prepare it to make an absolutely delicious dish. However, you say you can’t eat it—’

‘I said I’d never eaten it. What’s whale-blubber got to do with sex?’

‘Practically everything, if you’re an Eskimo. Survival first, sex second.’ As he spoke Hubert, noticing a two-inch quantity of champagne at the bottom of the bottle, poured it into his own glass. He now drank it and waited for Pauline to snap back some reply to him, which she failed to do.

Hubert repeated dreamily, ‘Blubber!’

‘Do you mean to insult women by saying they’re like blubber to sleep with?’ Pauline said.

‘I don’t know what they’re like to sleep with. But just because you haven’t done a thing doesn’t imply you can’t.’

‘Well, I’ve never eaten blubber and I’m damn sure I couldn’t,’ Pauline said. ‘What has all this got to do with sex?’

‘I thought we were talking about love,’ Hubert said, persuasively. He considered it was time to go to bed but on the whole he decided another bottle of champagne between them would be a good investment and a good idea. It was appalling, he thought as he undid the cork, how much she wanted a lover and how much he needed a secretary-accomplice.

‘What are you doing?’ said Pauline, sitting winefully and sulkily in the corner of the big sofa.

‘Opening another bottle of expensive champagne. With you in this mood, Miss Thin, I can’t afford not to.’

‘May I bring my lover in Brussels to stay with us for a while? He gets leave soon,’ Pauline said.

‘No,’ he said, crossly. If she can try to be clever, he thought, I can be really clever. He filled their glasses, sank into his chair and raised his glass slightly to her before he sipped.