The Takeover (23 page)

Pauline started to cry, pulling from her satchel-bag a large red handkerchief with white spots which it would seem was designed, even the handkerchief, to enrage Hubert. Pauline’s skinny boy-friend Walter came out of the house, and stopped in some astonishment at the scene. He had not seen Hubert before in his robes nor Pauline in her new outfit, although he had seen her cry at various times.

Hubert, who had taken some care to pose himself under the bower, was unwilling to disarrange the effect. He stood motionless with his arm raised to receive in benediction the people whom he could already hear arriving at the front of the house. Motionless as he was, he screamed in his heat and fury, ‘That woman has no sense of stage management. Tell her to go and remove those objectionable clothes. She’s supposed to be the chief of Diana’s vestals and she looks like Puss-in-Boots at the pantomime. Don’t forget I’ve had experience with the theatre, I’ve had a lot of success, and when I ran my play in Paris,
Ce Soir Mon Frère,
I took responsibility for all the costumes.’

Walter, unable to make sense of the quarrel, said to Pauline, ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘I have to wear something to symbolize my authority in the Fellowship,’ Pauline wailed from behind her red handkerchief. ‘Otherwise I’ll just be taken for one of the rest. I know what I’m doing and I’ve worked myself to death for ten days. The running about, the phoning, the fruit juice, the hairdresser, the sandwiches, and choosing my suit and getting it altered, and making the list and typing the order of business for the meeting.’

‘Why don’t you take off the boots and the hat?’ said Walter against the background of more explosive sounds from Hubert at the other end of the garden. ‘You’ll be too hot in all that stuff. It looks fine, but—’

‘Here they come,’ said Pauline, as a group of people walked up the side-path, chattering, to reach the back of the house. ‘I’m on duty.’ She strode to the little gate that divided the pathway from the garden, threw it open and began to receive.

Some had come from enthusiasm, some from curiosity, and a few peasants and trade-workers of the district who had already been initiated into the cult had come because they liked the international and egalitarian atmosphere.

Pauline had put out benches in front of the throne under the leafy bower where Hubert stood. She scrutinized each person, greeting them with an aloof, red-eyed smile, as she waved them to their seats.

‘Why, Pauline,’ said Father Cuthbert, ‘you look very sporty.’ Pauline waved him on, while Walter, beside her, in his blue jeans and open-necked shirt, smiled nervously. The priest passed on, accompanied by his fellow-Jesuit Gerard Harvey.

One local woman whispered to another, ‘Those Jesuits always come, both of them.’

‘The Jesuits always go two together, never alone,’ said her friend.

‘Like carabinieri,’ said the other, ‘because one can read and the other can write,’ and her laughter crackled in the air like a fire in the grass until Pauline’s frown quenched it.

By four o’clock they were all assembled and the gate was locked. Pauline had confiscated a motion-picture camera from Letizia Bernardini who had brought her brother Pietro to take a film of the proceedings. Letizia looked sour but did not challenge the booted leader. Berto’s son Pino was also of the party, he having been especially attracted to this meeting because of Maggie’s feud with Hubert.

Not long ago, Letizia’s friend, the psychiatrist Marino Vesperelli, whom she had brought to dinner to meet Maggie that night at her father’s house two years before, had discovered in the big general mental hospital in Rome a Swedish patient who had no relations who bothered with him, no friends, but who was apparently cured of the drug addiction which had landed him in that place two summers ago. In conversation with the patient Marino learned that he had been at Nemi with Hubert, working, he said, as a secretarial aide; and in this way, with Letizia’s help, Kurt had been safely restored to Hubert who was horrified but impotent to protest; besides, Pauline had taken the boy’s part. Kurt was now an acolyte in the Fellowship. He got up late and went out often in a little
cinque cento
car that Letizia had lent him: Hubert prowled around Kurt’s room and searched his pockets while he lay asleep, hoping to find traces of narcotic drugs or a hypodermic needle, and so an excuse for getting rid of him. However, Kurt was so far blameless, only somewhat lazy, and here he was as part of the household to help with the meeting in the wild-grown leafy garden.

Pauline’s energies had brought back two other lost sheep, named Damian Runciwell and Ian Mackay, only a little changed in appearance and very happy to come and spend another summer with Hubert as in the idyllic past of 1972 when they had all lazed and lain around together, wearing fantastic jewellery and cooking fantastic food. Pauline had often heard Hubert talk nostalgically of those days before she had come to work for him, and before Maggie’s marriage had spoiled everything. Like a good sheep-dog Pauline had rounded up three of those four secretaries, and brought them happily before Hubert. Hubert had much to bear in these days of his new prosperity. ‘I would have brought you Lauro, too, if I could have done,’ Pauline assured him.

‘I’m sure you would,’ Hubert had said.

‘Well, all I want to do is to make you happy, Hubert,’ said Pauline.

‘It’s the thought that matters, Miss Thin,’ Hubert said. ‘Diana be praised.’

‘Oh, aren’t you glad to see these old friends? You know how you always talk about that summer before I came to help you out. Now you can relive it all over again. Except, of course, for Lauro. I’m sorry about Lauro. Only, you know, he’s absolutely over there on the Radcliffe side and making a fortune. And getting married, too.’

Hubert would have thrown Pauline out that very evening, the three young men with her, had it not been that she knew too much, she knew too much. And here they were among the crowd of selected followers in the garden.

Hubert smiled on them all benevolently when they were seated. About thirty people, he thought. Pauline Thin must be out of her mind, he thought, to call a secret meeting of thirty-odd people. What sort of secret is that?

He decided to change his plan somewhat, and to refrain from discussing anything that might be deemed illicit by the Italian or ecclesiastical authorities, such as the raising of funds and the missionary work necessary to internationalize the Fellowship. A service of worship and a testimony of faith might equally serve this purpose, together with a deliberate accent on the charismatic features of the old, old religion of nature.

‘I am the direct descendant of the goddess Diana,’ he announced, ‘Diana of Nemi, Diana of the Woods and so, indirectly, of her brother the god Apollo.’

Sitting apart from the congregation the two Jesuit observers gave out charismatic smiles in all directions and made way for a late arrival whom Pauline had sent to sit with them. Another observer, Hubert thought. How many observers do you have at a secret meeting? He glared at Pauline who looked angrily back, with fury on her face under her ridiculous hat. Evidently she was still dwelling on Hubert’s insults. As well she might, Hubert thought with desperate resentment of the woman as he looked at her, ordering people around, placing them here, guiding them there, with those boots on her awful legs. Hubert, under the leafy trellis, breathed deeply. He noticed that Pauline now held a black-bound book in the hand that indicated the seats; Hubert thought it looked like his Bible but then he put the thought aside, not seeing what she could possibly want to do with it. As she also held the confiscated camera at this moment, Hubert assumed she had also, probably quite needlessly, taken charge of someone’s book: bossy little nobody.

Walter, the weak fool, was beside her, holding a list and ticking off names. Who were all these people? Pauline had told Hubert from time to time of new people who could be trusted. But he had no idea they amounted to so many. Two American art historians, very cultured, very rich, Pauline had said. A girl from Rome, ‘my best friend there,’ Pauline had said. Then she had said on one occasion, ‘a girlfriend of my friend and she happens to be Michael Radcliffe’s mistress.’ Hubert had felt satisfaction at this. Yes, but how did they add up to so many? Hubert did not know most of these people who sat before him.

From the house stepped another robed figure. He was dressed in a toga-like garment which bunched and bundled about his tubby body. It was the lawyer Massimo de Vita; he had come to stand by Hubert’s throne and give a simultaneous translation for the benefit of the Italians present. ‘Friends,’ said Hubert, holding out his arms in benediction, while Massimo announced, ‘
Amici
’.

‘Friends,’ Hubert said. ‘Brothers and Sisters of Nature. As I have said, I am the descendant of Diana and Apollo, the gods of the old religion that goes back beyond the dawn of history, into the far and timeless regions of mythology where centuries and aeons do not count,’

Massimo de Vita kept even pace behind Hubert, who spoke slowly, somehow without his usual energetic conviction; he was still ruffled by Pauline Thin; she had put him off his stroke. ‘Diana,’ he went on, ‘Goddess of Wildlife, is older than man. She fought on the field of Troy and was humiliated by her jealous step-mother who, as it is written in Homer, took the quiver of arrows from Diana’s shoulders and whacked her with it. But such was the charisma of Diana, the virgin goddess, protectress of nature, that she took no revenge, but rather decided to come to Italy, change her name, and dwell amongst us at Nemi. You must know that her name in Greece was Artemis and not far away from the hill upon which we are gathered here in this garden is Monte Artemisio; and down below us lies the sanctuary of Diana, my ancestress, ravished and pillaged….’ And with worthy self-effacement Massimo de Vita recited,
‘Diana, la mia antenata, rapita e saccheggiata..
..’

Meanwhile the sudden voice of a woman cried out the determined statement, ‘I’m going to testify.’ Hubert, startled, looked towards the voice, while the toga’d advocate, also surprised, instantly pulled himself together, and, believing this to be part of the show, since the voice was Pauline’s, continued his dutiful translation, ‘…
adesso vengo testimoniare.
...’

‘What is this interruption?’ said Hubert, as everyone turned to look at Pauline.

‘Cos’è questo disturbo?’
translated Massimo into his loudspeaker, although his eyes looked desperately about him for some guidance. He got none whatsoever. He looked towards Pauline, seeing her for the first time that day in her strange sporty outfit and immediately presumed that this interruption was a prearranged affair: a sort of dialogue, all part of that sense of theatre Hubert had so often said was necessary for the success of the Fellowship.

‘Miss Thin,’ Hubert bellowed into his amplifier, ‘do you realize you are in Church in every important sense?’

Massimo continued translating.

Pauline bounded up to the leafy bower and stood beside Hubert, grabbing the loudspeaker. ‘I have a right to testify and prophesy,’ she proclaimed, ‘and I want to testify from the New Testament.’

Father Cuthbert jumped up and down in his seat while his companion, Gerard, smiled eagerly. The rest of the congregation stirred and asked of each other what was it all about, and then fell silent as Pauline’s voice boomed out, “The First Epistle to Timothy, Chapter I, verses 3 and 4:

As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith.…’

The congregation remained silent, waiting for further enlightenment which it was clear Pauline, adjusting the loudspeaker, was preparing to give. Only Cuthbert Plaice moved to whisper something with gleaming eyes into his fellow-Jesuit’s ear. Hubert, immediately sensing sabotage, attempted first to possess himself of the microphone. But Pauline hung on to it. Hubert therefore, in terror of what she might say next, all in one gesture made as if he were adjusting the instrument for her better to speak and then stretched his left arm at right angles to his body so that it rested across her shoulders in a protective attitude. Thus he made it appear that Pauline’s interruption was part of the service, and even his first exclamation—‘What is this interruption?’—might have been part of a dramatic litany. Pauline looked amazed, and turned to Hubert as if to ask if he really meant it.

Massimo, meanwhile, was still catching up with the Italian translation of Pauline’s text, which he found difficult.

‘Proceed,’ said Hubert, grandly.

Two young men in the congregation who had been drawn to the meeting by the rumour that Maggie, whom they both knew slightly, was to be present, sat near the front. One was a former chauffeur of Maggie’s and the other was that portrait-painter who had been recommended by Coco de Renault, and for whom she and Mary had somewhat disastrously and very expensively sat. Before setting out for Nemi they had pepped themselves up with trial injections of a new amphetamine drug. The scene before them gave the two young men to believe that the new drug was a very great advance on any previous drug they had sampled, and, as Massimo’s garbled version wobbled over his loudspeaker, the two young men began to clap their hands in rhythm.

Pauline pulled herself together to proceed with her testimony under the surprise of Hubert’s bidding. With Hubert’s arm fondly resting on her shoulders she changed her tone of fury to one of breathless timidity. ‘I only wanted to point out,’ she told the congregation, ‘that the words of the Apostle Paul refer to Diana of Ephesus, where there was a cult of Diana, and that’s what inspired me. If you remember in The Acts, and I could find the place, I think—’ She started to look through the Bible in her hand, while the loud rhythmic clapping increased, others of the congregation being encouraged to join in. As she floundered, Father Gerard, perceiving her difficulty, charismatically rose and called out, ‘Chapter 19.’