The Takeover (18 page)

Berto, however, was still concerned for Maggie, and now started on a course that was distinctively his own and which he reserved for occasions when the atmosphere required to be soothed. It consisted of the introduction of certain words into the conversation which formed a magic circle of sweet suggestiveness, and, such was his instinct and skill, that he managed to do this without definitely changing the subject. ‘When I was young,’ Berto now said, ‘I was very much in love with a Spanish girl who had been married to a man much older than herself; he was killed in the war. But although I was very much in love I didn’t marry her because I felt that she would always desire an older man, and I, of course, was not much older.’

‘Well, in the case of Dino,’ Marisa went on, ‘let me tell you that he does ride with her every morning after visiting poor Lidia’s tomb.’

‘It is so fragrant and cool in that cemetery,’ Berto said. ‘You know, it’s quite romantic. I went once to visit our German aunts who are buried in that little cemetery, tucked away in the Vatican, and I heard the nightingale, suddenly, as if paradise were there among the treetops. I also would have liked, afterwards, to have gone riding with a beautiful lady and kiss her.’

So he went on with his groupings of ‘I was in love’ and his ‘fragrants’, his ‘heaven’ and his ‘beautiful lady’ and all the pleasant numbers of romantic poetry trite in themselves but accumulatively evocative of a better life than the actual and present one; so he went on, and presently he could see Maggie’s wrists relaxing on the table and her shoulders responding as a cat which has been upset responds to the soft stroking hand.

He could see that the danger was past that she should again open her mouth and let forth her accusations like the dead pouring out of their tombs, crazed, on All Souls’ Night. If she had been a cat she would by now have started, against her better judgment, to purr, and if an analytical critic had been taking a careful note of all that was said, Berto’s magic technique would have been a feast more special than the very good lunch they were eating. Mary looked at Michael who alone among the company was brooding over whatever it was he had on his mind, and then she looked at Berto and once more thought how attractive he was in spite of his age; she hadn’t noticed before how good-looking was Berto, what marvellous eyes he had.

‘And before they went to Baden they were getting that new pool in the garden,’ Marisa was saying. ‘They had to dig much deeper, and do you know they found a marble head of the first century? Dino says they are now digging deeper to find the rest of it.’

‘The Belle Arti will stop everything,’ said Cousin Viola. ‘They’ll take it for the nation and someone will steal it and smuggle it abroad.’

‘Well, they had to leave for Baden,’ said Marisa. ‘But I’m sure, I’m sure, that they haven’t breathed a word to the Belle Arti.’ Again she appealed to her neighbours. ‘The Belle Arti,’ she said to Michael on her left and to the young criminal who went by the name of George Falk on her right, ‘is our cultural protection agency, but they stop work on anything the moment you report a find. In Italy you only have to dig a few metres and you have a find. If one reported every find to the Belle Arti nobody would get a house built or a swimming pool.’

‘Can they trust the servants?’ said Cousin Viola.

‘It happened once to me,’ Berto said, ‘that I was helping Guillaume to put up a rabbit hutch as he was sure the rabbits we bought to eat were poisonous and he wanted to breed our own rabbits. We were digging a trench out there behind the orchard and I felt my spade touch on a stone, but not a stone. It felt not like the stones of the garden. So I put aside the spade and went down on my knees. Guillaume was amazed and he said, “But what are you doing, Marchese!” I scratched at the earth with my hands and I saw a colour, blue, then another, red. It was a moment I could never forget, such a moment of all my dreams you remember, Viola, the Byzantine vase. It was in fragments, of course.’

‘It’s in the museum in Verona,’ said Viola, calmly eating.

‘Oh, yes, it went to the museum.’

‘You could have kept it,’ Marisa said.

‘How could I have kept it? But the moment of discovery, it’s a moment that no one can take away from me, not even the Communists. I went back that night to look at the pieces in the moonlight. We left them where we found them, afraid to break them, and Guillaume constructed a little wire fence around them. I looked up at the clouds passing over the moon thinking of Guillaume’s tenderness as he made the fence. It was
una cosa molto bella, molto bella
—’

‘You have many fine things in this house’ said the younger criminal.

‘Exquisite,’ said Mr Stuyvesant, the older one, for whom under another name Interpol were looking to help them with their inquiries. ‘It must have been wonderful to grow up with them.’

‘I was not here very much as a child,’ Berto said. ‘I was a great deal in Switzerland, and then at school. But when I was a very young man just before the outbreak of the war I remember we had a masked ball here. It was considered a small house for a masked ball, but it was a summer night, you can imagine for young people in those days how exciting.…’

The troubadour host turned inquiringly to Lauro who stood quietly by his chair waiting for him to finish speaking. Lauro had appeared unexpectedly, for he did not serve at table here in Berto’s villa, clashing so much as he did with Guillaume and the cook. Berto looked up at the brown face with a little questioning smile. Lauro spoke in rapid Italian, very excited and happy and Berto listened with his eyes on Maggie till Lauro had finished, and had turned and left the dining-room.

‘The masked ball,’ said Marisa across the table to her cousin Viola, ‘was where Mimi de Bourbon met Aunt Clothilde. She had just broken off from the Thurn and Taxis—’

‘Maggie!’ said Berto, ‘do you know what Lauro has just told me? Your Gauguin is perfectly safe at Nemi; it’s there in your house and hasn’t been moved.’

‘Oh, darling!’ said Maggie, who was by now sweetly mellowed by the fragrant distillations of Berto’s talk.

Viola, more mesmerized by her cousin Marisa than by her cousin Berto, set her pale head at a saintly angle, and said, ‘Aunt Clothilde is still President of the Orphans of St Joachim. She does good work. She has not changed since the old days.’

‘Well, she should have,’ said Marisa, ‘but that’s a different topic. I remember—’ Meanwhile, Berto recounted how Lauro had telephoned to his girl-friend at Nemi, and she had gone on a pretext to Hubert’s house, and there had seen the leafy Gauguin in its usual place.

‘How did she know,’ said Mary, ‘where to look for that picture?’

‘Apparently Lauro’s fiancée goes to Mallindaine’s dreadful meetings regularly. Moon-worshippers. You can imagine—’

Maggie turned to Mr Stuyvesant, ‘
Your
Gauguin must be a fake,’ she said, happily.

‘It isn’t my Gauguin,’ said the art-thief. ‘It belonged to Neuilles-Pfortzheimer’s client, and it has been sold as an authentic. One should inform them.’

‘Could it possibly be,’ said George Falk, the younger crook, ‘that the Gauguin at your home is a fake?’

‘It is authentic,’ said Maggie, and rose to lead her guests into the garden-room for coffee.

Michael woke from his self-absorbed dream and said, ‘Mallindaine could have had a copy made. He could have sold the original.’

‘Oh, come,’ said Berto, as he stood aside to let his guests move out of the dining-room.

‘We should get the experts,’ Michael said, ‘and, anyway, get the picture out of Hubert Mallindaine’s hands.’

‘That I do agree,’ said Maggie.

Berto was about to catch Maggie’s arm, to waylay her before she left, and whisper in her ear that she really might, now that she knew her picture was safe, and her initial shock had blown over, apologize to Mr Stuyvesant and Mr Falk. He was about to say she really should, when he was himself waylaid by Guillaume, Maggie in the meantime sailing ahead. Guillaume, alone with Berto in the dining-room, now confided his change of mind about the two visitors of whom he had earlier approved. ‘I think they’re up to no good,’ said Guillaume.

‘But why, Guillaume? What makes you say so?’

Guillaume seemed uncertain what precisely to reply. ‘The senior visitor spilled
ragoût
on his trousers,’ he ventured somewhat wildly. ‘It’s embarrassing him a great red stain, and he’s trying to cover it up. Right in the front.’

Berto, stifling all reasonable thoughts, and only recalling that it is the easiest thing in the world to splash on one’s clothes some of that tomato sauce swimming in which Italian cooks love to present their pasta, was immediately troubled. Plainly, Guillaume had merely only offered an outward symbol for an inward insight, and it was the insight that Berto trusted.

‘See if you can do anything for his trousers,’ Berto said. ‘Offer him some talcum powder.
Ragoût
is always a messy dish. I don’t see what it has remotely to do with trusting the unfortunate man, anyway. An accident can happen to the best of us. No reflection whatsoever on his character.’

In the garden-room Berto found Mr Stuyvesant sitting in a crouched position, leaning well forward, with his legs crossed, holding his coffee. But one could still see, on the pale thin-striped trousers that Berto had so much admired, numerous red blotches and smears. He was glad he had not asked Maggie to apologize to these men. It struck him, now, that it was strange how neither of them had seemed to expect an apology, even after news had arrived that Maggie’s picture was still in her house. They had not been offended, only embarrassed, by Maggie’s outburst. That could be a sign of guilt. One had to be careful who one let into one’s house. He looked out of the french windows to where the young Mr Falk was walking on the lawn between Maggie and Cousin Viola, and he looked again at Mr Stuyvesant crouched over his coffee. Guillaume had come in to hover. ‘Why don’t you go with Guillaume to the pantry,’ said Berto, ‘and let him do something to your trousers?’

Mr Stuyvesant looked helplessly at his splashed suit and gave a short laugh. ‘Not the pantry,’ Guillaume said. ‘If the gentleman will go to the guest cloakroom I will bring some materials to clean.’

Ah, yes, yes, thought Berto. Guillaume is thinking of the silver depository. Not the pantry, not the pantry. Stuyvesant rose to follow Guillaume while Berto, Knight of the Round Table, courteously remarked, ‘Beastly stuff,
ragout
.’

He hung around the window watching his guests and his wife wandering around the garden in the May sunlight. Lauro and Michael stood under the lovely portico which gave off to the back of the house. Lauro was talking quietly but urgently, Michael listening sullenly. Lauro glanced towards the french window, caught Berto’s eye where he stood watching, grinned, and resumed his talk. Berto watched Lauro with tolerant resignation; he had little doubt that Lauro was raising a moderate sum of money every so often from Michael; not much, but a moderate amount, just to keep quiet about the mistress in Rome. Berto looked at Lauro’s shining head with its expensive hair-cut. It was difficult to think of him keeping a secret or doing anything free of charge. ‘Once a whore,’ Berto mused to himself, ‘always a whore. That’s my philosophy.’

Guillaume’s efforts to clean the trousers were not a great success. Mr Stuyvesant asked for his coat, saying he would hold it over the stain to hide it. So his coat was brought, and holding it draped over his arm he collected his friend and said goodbye to the party very quickly. Berto, with Guillaume hovering behind, watched them leave from the front door. They revved up and left with unusual speed. ‘Guillaume,’ said Berto, ‘I think you’re right about those people. They drove off as if it was a getaway from a bank robbery.’

Guillaume muttered to himself in his French-Italian. Berto went to telephone to Alex Pfortzheimer.

D
EAR
M
ARCHESA
T
ULLIO
-F
RIOLE
,

Having written in capacity your legal advocate to Mr Hubert Mallindaine at Nemi with regarding the opera of art painted by Paul Gauguin in view of your righteous inquiry in light of the sale of said painting in Switzerland, and having myself accompanied our expert to examine said painting at Nemi by Mr Hubert Mallindaine’s request I have to report as it is suspected by the distinguished House Neuilles-Pfortzheimer that this picture at Nemi is a copy of original.

From which arises the complication which I myself have foreseen but not wishing to disturb without necessity have not mentioned to you since this moment. That is, the above-written Mr Mallindaine is hoping to claim of you the cost of original which he is declaring to be part of agreement settled upon him at your handing over to him in the year of 1968 the land and promise of house which he undertook for three years plus housebuilding to his requirements personally in accordance his needs; and the above-written Mallindaine was given contents in the year 1972, July 1, which makes, combined, the remuneration to his services of ten years adviser in your affairs. Always according to Mr Mallindaine’s advice, the opera of Paul Gauguin was said at your moment of gift to be original which he has been accepting as such. This is the situation which naturally I hold off with every means from making a confrontation at the present time, as Mr Mallindaine has not yet employed legal offices in the case.

It is my hope you will approve my actions which I should explain you if you should be disposed to be my guest for lunch at the good restaurant that I most admire where we can discuss in tranquillity on the day of your choice.

Very soon hoping to have your telephonic communication my dear Marchesa,

Yours cordially,

Massimo de Vita.

Massimo de Vita, the obscure lawyer whom Maggie had engaged to evict Hubert from his house, sat in one of the copies of Maggie’s Louis XIV chairs and looked out at the lake below, while Hubert read through this letter which the lawyer proposed to post from Rome next morning. As he gazed at the still green lake he thought of Maggie, and pictured her, perhaps bursting into his office, Queen of Sheba, making the secretary even more indignant than she constitutionally was, and demanding, with the rings flashing on her fingers, that Hubert be denounced to the police; whereupon, so the lawyer day-dreamed while Hubert studied the letter, one could have a beautiful time calming her down.