Part 21 (1/2)

'Buongiorno, signora!' I called back. Once I made a terrible mistake in Sunday school when giving an answer to a question, saying that Joseph was G.o.d. Someone began to t.i.tter and I could feel myself going red with embarra.s.sment, but Miss Alzapiedi said no, that was an error anyone could make. Miss Alzapiedi's long chest was as flat as a table-top. Summer or winter, she never wore stockings, her white, bony ankles exposed to all weathers. It seemed a natural confusion to say that Joseph was G.o.d, Joseph being Jesus's father and G.o.d being the Father also. 'Of course.' Miss Alzapiedi nodded, and the t.i.ttering ceased.

I dare say remembering Sunday school was much the same as the General having tea in Mrs Patch's cottage and Otmar recalling the comfort of his parents' house. It was a way of coming to terms, of finding something to cling to in the muddle; I dare say it's natural that people would. In all my time at Miss Alzapiedi's Sunday school there was only that one uneasy moment, before Miss Alzapiedi stepped in with kindness. Otmar similarly recalled being reprimanded because he'd overturned a tin of paint when the decorators came to paint the staircase wall and the hall, and again when he stole a pear from the sideboard dish. There was a moment of embarra.s.sment in the dormitory the old man had spoken of, with its rows of blue-blanketed beds and little boys in pyjamas. But these instances, dreadful at the time, were pleasant memories now.

'And they spread out palms before the donkey's feet,' Miss Alzapiedi said, and while she spoke you could easily see the figure of Jesus in his robes, with his long hair and his beard. The donkey was a sacred animal. 'You have only to note the cross on every donkey's back,' Miss Alzapiedi said. 'All your lives please note the black cross on that holy creature.'

The General had led his men to the battle-fronts of the world but always he'd returned to the girl he'd proposed to on a sunlit lawn, whose tears of joy had stained the leather of his uniform. He had not looked at other women. Amid the banter and camaraderie of the barracks his desires had never wandered, not even once, not even in the heat of the desert with the promise of desert women only a day or two away. His happy marriage was written in the geography of the old man's face, a simple statement: that for nearly a lifetime two people had been as one.

'Isn't that much better?' Otmar's mother said the first time he wore spectacles, when a world of blurred objects and drifting colours acquired precision. In the oculist's room he couldn't read the letters on the charts. The oculist had spectacles, too, and little red marks on the fat of his face, the left-hand side, close to the nose. When Otmar asked his mother if he'd always have to wear the spectacles now she nodded, and the oculist nodded also. When the oculist smiled his white teeth glistened. The mother's coat was made of fur.

It was Mary who began the business about donkeys, riding on one all the way to the stable of the inn. Joseph walked beside her, guiding the donkey's head, thinking about carpentry matters. Mary understood the conversation of angels. Joseph sawed wood and planed it smooth. He made doors and boxes and undertook repairs. To this day I can see Joseph's sandals and Jesus's bare feet, and the women was.h.i.+ng them. To this day I can see Jesus on the holy donkey in the picture above my bed.

'Fragments make up a life, my dear,' Lady Daysmith says in Precious September Precious September. For the General, bodies lie where they have fallen on the sand, sunburnt flesh stiffening, soldiers from Rochester and Somerset. For the General, there are those gentle Cotswold bells, the organ booming, evening hymns. There is the beauty of virginity specially kept, to be given on a wedding night; and drinks beneath that tree the child fell out of. 'Darling,' the well-loved wife returns his love. 'Darling, you are so sweet to me.'

For me, there is the stolid dog, the dampness of the beach, the seagulls coming nearer. There are the searchlights of Twentieth-Century Fox, the soft roar of the lion, Western Electric Sound. In a room a man removes an artificial leg and pauses to ma.s.sage the stump. Across a street a neon sign flashes red, then green, all through a half-forgotten night. First thing of all, there's a broken floor-tile, brownish, smooth.

Why is there fear left over in Otmar's eyes, behind the spectacles? Does some greater ordeal continue, some private awfulness? In the supermarket the girl's hand reaches again into the shelves. The adoration in the car park and the cafe is an ecstasy in its first bright moment. Liebe! Liebe! Liebe! Liebe! Eyes close, fingers touch. But something is missing in all this; there is some mystery. Eyes close, fingers touch. But something is missing in all this; there is some mystery.

Years after her time as a Sunday-school teacher Miss Alzapiedi becomes Lady Daysmith shortened to a reasonable height, supplied with hair that isn't a nuisance, given a bosom. Lady Daysmith is old of course, Miss Alzapiedi was scarcely twenty in the Sunday school. But a plain girl can grow old gracefully, why ever not? 'The peepshow of memory is what I mean by fragments': I hadn't been in my house more than a month before I caused the woman who had been the Sunday-school girl to utter so.

In the soft warmth of that early morning I paused on the track that led to the heights behind my house. I looked back at the house itself, in that moment acutely aware of how the malignancy of the act had reached out into us, draining so much from the old man, rooting itself in Otmar, leaving sickness with the child. Then I pushed all that away from me and tried once more, though without success, to find a beginning for Ceaseless Tears Ceaseless Tears. I strolled on a little way before finally turning back.

'I have always wanted a garden here,' I remarked to Otmar on the terrace less than an hour later. We smoked together. I asked him if there'd been a garden at his parents' house and he said yes, a small back garden, shady in summertime, a place to take a book to. You could tell from the way he spoke that his mother and father were no longer alive. I don't know why I wondered if this fact was somehow related to the fear that haunted him. I did so none the less.

'Where is this?' the child asked, suddenly, a week after my first walk on the white roads. She had been engrossed in one of her pictures, stretched out on the floor. The blinds were drawn a little down for coolness, but there was light enough in the salotto salotto.

'Where is this?' Aimee asked again.

The General was sitting with his newspaper, near the windows. Otmar had just entered the room. Neither of them spoke. Eventually I said: 'You are in my house, Aimee. I am Mrs Delahunty.'

She did not directly reply, but said that her mother was cross because there'd been a quarrel in the yard. Girls couldn't be robbers, her brother Richard insisted, because he wanted to be the robber himself. As if speaking to herself, the child explained that she was to be the old woman who hadn't the strength to get up from her sun chair when the robber walked in and asked where the safe was. But she was always the old woman; all you did was lie there. She continued to draw the foreleg of a dog that did not seem to be alive. She shaded its hollow stomach. She and her brother had tried to guess, on the train-station platform, what two Italians were saying to one another. The woman of the pair was angry. The man had forgotten to lock the windows of their house, Aimee guessed.

'I should think that was so,' I said.

'That woman was mad at him.'

It was difficult to know if she spoke in response to what I'd said or not. A frown gathered on her freckled forehead. Her flaxen hair, so like her mother's, trailed smoothly down her back. Her eyes, lit for the while she spoke, went dead again.

'Your uncle's coming, Aimee. Mr Riversmith.'

But she was colouring now, lightly pa.s.sing the crayons over the misshapen limbs and bodies. The tip of her tongue protruded slightly, in concentration.

'Mr Riversmith,' I said again.

Still there was no response. Otmar left the room, and I guessed he had gone to ask Quinty to summon Dr Innocenti.

'Your uncle,' the General said.

Aimee spoke again, about another game she and her brother had played, and then, with the same abruptness, she ceased. She said nothing more, but those few moments of communication had more than a slight effect on both the General and Otmar, and in a sense on me. This spark had kindled something in us; the brief transformation fluttered life into a hope that had not been there before. At last there was something good, happening in the present. At last we could reach out from our preoccupation with ourselves alone.

The General smiled at Aimee, while she sat there on the floor, lost to us again. Aimee was a lovely name, I said, not knowing what else to say. 'Thank G.o.d for this,' the General murmured, to me directly.

'Yes, thank G.o.d.'

Otmar returned to the room and sat with us in silence, and in time we heard Dr Innocenti's car approaching. We didn't break the silence, but listened to the hum of the engine as it came closer, until eventually the tyres scrunched on the gravel outside.

'Coraggio!' Dr Innocenti said, speaking softly from the doorway, not coming quite into the room. 'Va meglio, vero.'

Later he predicted that Aimee would make progress now, but warned us that on the way to recovery there might be disturbances. It was as well to expect this since often the return to reality could be alarming for a child: you had only to consider what this reality was, he pointed out. His hope was that Aimee would not be too badly affected. He charged us with vigilance.

The days and weeks that followed were happy. Diffidently, I put it to Dr Innocenti that the child was the surviving fledgling in a rifled nest, her bright face the exorcist of our pain. The beauty that was promised her, and already gathering in those features, was surely to be set against the torn limbs in Carrozza 219, against the blood still dripping from the broken gla.s.s, the severed hand like an ornament in the air? Her chatter challenged the old man's guilt and was listened to, as wisdom might be, by Otmar. 'Si. Si,' Dr Innocenti several times repeated, hearing me out and appearing to be moved.

Local people, learning that some victims of the outrage were in my house, sent gifts flowers and wine, fruit, panet-tone. panet-tone. The The carabinieri carabinieri came less often now, once in a while to ensure that Aimee was still being looked after, then not at all, instead making their inquiries of Dr Innocenti. Once I walked into the kitchen to find Signora Bardini weeping, and thought at first she suffered some distress, but when she lifted her head I saw that her streaming eyes gleamed with joy. Naturally no such display of emotion could be expected of Quinty, though Rosa Crevelli was affected, of that I'm certain. 'Aimee! Aimee!' she called about the house. came less often now, once in a while to ensure that Aimee was still being looked after, then not at all, instead making their inquiries of Dr Innocenti. Once I walked into the kitchen to find Signora Bardini weeping, and thought at first she suffered some distress, but when she lifted her head I saw that her streaming eyes gleamed with joy. Naturally no such display of emotion could be expected of Quinty, though Rosa Crevelli was affected, of that I'm certain. 'Aimee! Aimee!' she called about the house.

Perhaps for the General Aimee became a daughter with whom he might begin again. Perhaps for Otmar she was the girl who had died on the train. I do not know; I am not qualified to say; I never asked them. But for my own part I can claim without reservation that I became as devoted to the child during that time as any mother could be. It was enough to see her sprawled on the floor with her crayons, or making a little edifice out of stones near where the car was kept, or drinking Signora Bardini's iced tea. Aimee shuffled in and out of a darkness, remaining with us for longer periods as these weeks went by. Sometimes she would sit close to me on the terrace, and in the cool of the evening I would stroke her fine, beautiful hair.

5.

The telephone in my house rings quietly, but never goes unheard because there is a receiver in the hall and in the kitchen, as well as in my writing-room. It was I myself, in my private room, who answered it when eventually Aimee's uncle rang.

'Mrs Delahunty?'

'Yes.'

'Mrs Delahunty, this is Thomas Riversmith.'

'How d'you do, Mr Riversmith.'

'May I inquire how Aimee is?' He sounded as if grit had got into his vocal cords a tight, unfriendly voice, unusual in an American.

'Aimee is beginning to return to us.'

'She speaks now every day?'

'Since the afternoon she spoke she has continued.'

'I've talked with your doctor many times.' There was a pause and then, with undisguised difficulty: 'I want to say, Mrs Delahunty, that I appreciate what you have done for my niece.'

'I have not done much.'

'May I ask you to tell me what the child says when she speaks to you?'

'In the first place she asked where she was. Several times she has mentioned her brother by name. And has spoken of being scolded by her mother.'