After the Fireworks (10 page)

“Private universes?” she questioned.

“Yes, private, not shared. You create one, you live in it, each time you're in love, for example.” (Brightly serious, Pamela nodded her understanding and agreement; yes, yes, she knew all about
that.
) “Each time you're spiritually exalted,” he went on, “each time you're drunk, even. Everybody has his own favourite short cuts to the other world. Mine, in those days, was opium.”

“Opium?” She opened her eyes very wide. “Do you mean to say you smoked opium?” She was thrilled. Opium was a vice of the first order.

“It's as good a way of becoming supernatural,” he answered, “as looking at one's nose or one's navel, or not eating, or repeating a word over and over again, till it loses its sense and you forget how to think. All roads lead to Rome. The only bother about opium is that it's rather an unwholesome road. I had to go to a nursing home in Cannes to get disintoxicated.”

“All the same,” said Pamela, doing her best to imitate the quiet casualness of his manner, “it must be rather delicious, isn't it? Awfully exciting, I mean,” she added, forgetting not to be thrilled.

“
Too
exciting.” He shook his head. “That's the trouble. We needs must love the excitingest when we see it.
The supernatural
is
exciting. But I don't want to love the supernatural, I want to love the natural. Not that a little supernaturalness isn't, of course, perfectly natural and necessary. But you can overdo it. I overdid it then. I was all the time in 'tother world, never here. I stopped smoking because I was ill. But even if I hadn't been, I'd have stopped sooner or later for aesthetic reasons. The supernatural world is so terribly baroque—altogether too Counter-Reformation and Bernini. At its best it can be Greco. But you can have too much even of Greco. A big dose of him makes you begin to pine for Vulca and his Apollo.”

“But doesn't it work the other way too?” she asked. “I mean, don't you sometimes
long
to start smoking again?” She was secretly hoping that he'd let her try a pipe or two.

Fanning shook his head. “One doesn't get tired of very good bread,” he answered. “Apollo's like that. I don't pine for supernatural excitements. Which doesn't mean,” he added, “that I don't in practice run after them. You can't disintoxicate yourself of your culture. That sticks deeper than a mere taste for opium. I'd like to be able to think and live in the spirit of the God. But the fact remains that I can't.”

“Can't you?” said Pamela with a polite sympathy. She was more interested in the opium.

“No, no, you can't entirely disintoxicate yourself of mysticism and the tragic sense. You can't take a Turvey treatment for spirituality and disgust. You can't. Not nowadays. Acceptance is impossible in a split world like ours. You've got to recoil. In the circumstances it's right and proper. But absolutely it's wrong. If only one could accept as this God accepts, smiling like that . . .”

“But you
do
smile like that,” she insisted.

He laughed and, unclasping his hands, straightened himself up in his seat. “But unhappily,” he said, “a man can smile and smile and not be Apollo. Meanwhile, what's becoming of your education? Shouldn't we . . . ?”

“Well, if you like,” she assented dubiously. “Only my feet are rather tired. I mean, there's something about sightseeing. . . .”

“There is indeed,” said Fanning. “But I was prepared to be a martyr to culture. Still, I'm thankful you're not.” He smiled at her, and Pamela was pleased to find herself once more at the focus of his attention. It had been very interesting to hear him talk about his philosophy and all that. But all the same . . .

“Twenty to four,” said Fanning, looking at his watch. “I've an idea; shouldn't we drive out to Monte Cavo and spend the evening up there in the cool? There's a view. And a really very eatable dinner.”

“I'd love to. But . . .” Pamela hesitated. “Well, you see I did tell Guy I'd go out with him this evening.”

He was annoyed. “Well, if you prefer . . .”

“But I don't prefer,” she answered hastily. “I mean, I'd much rather go with you. Only I wondered how I'd let Guy know I wasn't. . . .”

“Don't let him know,” Fanning answered, abusing his victory. “After all, what are young men there for, except to wait when young women don't keep their appointments? It's their function in life.”

Pamela laughed. His words had given her a pleasing sense of importance and power. “Poor Guy!” she said through her laughter, and her eyes were insolently bright.

“You little hypocrite!”

“I'm not,” she protested. “I really
am
sorry for him.”

“A little hypocrite
and
a little devil,” was his verdict. He rose to his feet. “If you could see your own eyes now! But
andiamo.
”
*
He held out his hand to help her up. “I'm beginning to be rather afraid of you.”

“What nonsense!” She was delighted. They walked together towards the door.

Fanning made the driver go out by the Appian Way. “For the sake of your education,” he explained, pointing at the ruined tombs, “which we can continue, thank heaven, in comfort, and at twenty miles an hour.”

Leaning back luxuriously in her corner, Pamela laughed. “But I must say,” she had to admit, “it is really rather lovely.”

From Albano the road mounted through the chestnut woods towards Rocca di Papa. A few miles brought them to a turning on the right; the car came to a halt.

“It's barred,” said Pamela, looking out of the window. Fanning had taken out his pocket-book and was hunting among the bank-notes and the old letters. “The road's private,” he explained. “They ask for your card—heaven knows why. The only trouble being, of course, that I've never possessed such a thing as a visiting-card in my life. Still, I generally have one or two belonging to other people. Ah, here we are! Good!” he produced two pieces of pasteboard. A gatekeeper had appeared and was waiting by the door of the car. “Shall we say we're Count Keyserling?” said Fanning, handing her the count's card. “Or alternatively,” he read from the other, “that we're Herbert Watson, Funeral Furnisher, Funerals conducted with Efficiency and Reverence, Motor Hearses for use in every part of the Country.” He shook his head. “The last relic of my poor old friend Tom
Hatchard. Died last year. I had to bury him. Poor Tom! On the whole I think we'd better be Herbert Watson.
Ecco!
” He handed out the card; the man saluted and went to open the gate. “But give me back Count Keyserling.” Fanning stretched out his hand. “He'll come in useful another time.”

The car started and went roaring up the zig-zag ascent. Lying back in her corner, Pamela laughed and laughed, inextinguishably.

“But what
is
the joke?” he asked.

She didn't know herself. Mr. Watson and the Count had only been a pretext; this enormous laughter, which they had released, sprang from some other, deeper source. And perhaps it was a mere accident that it should be laughter at all. Another pretext, a different finger on the trigger, and it might have been tears, or anger, or singing “Constantinople” at the top of her voice—anything.

She was limp when they reached the top. Fanning made her sit down where she could see the view and himself went off to order cold drinks at the bar of the little inn that had once been the monastery of Monte Cavo.

Pamela sat where he had left her. The wooded slopes fell steeply away beneath her, down, down to the blue shining of the Alban Lake; and that toy palace perched on the hill beyond was the Pope's, that tiny city in a picture-book, Marino. Beyond a dark ridge on the left the round eye of Nemi looked up from its crater. Far off, behind Albano an expanse of blue steel, burnished beneath the sun, was the Tyrrhenian, and flat like the sea, but golden with ripening corn and powdered goldenly with a haze of dust, the Campagna stretched away from the feet of the subsiding hills, away and up towards a fading horizon, on which the blue ghosts of mountains floated
on a level with her eyes. In the midst of the expanse a half-seen golden chaos was Rome. Through the haze the dome of St. Peter's shone faintly in the sun with a glitter as of muted glass. There was an enormous silence, sad, sad but somehow consoling. A sacred silence. And yet when, coming up from behind her, Fanning broke it, his voice, for Pamela, committed no iconoclasms for it seemed, in the world of her feelings, to belong to the silence, it was made, as it were, of the same intimate and friendly substance. He squatted down on his heels beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder to steady himself.

“What a panorama of space and time!” he said. “So many miles, such an expanse of centuries! You can still walk on the paved road that led to the temple here. The generals used to march up sometimes in triumph. With elephants.”

The silence enveloped them again, bringing them together; and they were alone and as though conspiratorially isolated in an atmosphere of solemn amorousness.

“I signori son serviti,”
*
said a slightly ironic voice behind them.

“That's our drinks,” said Fanning. “Perhaps we'd better . . .” He got up and, as he unbent them, his knees cracked stiffly. He stooped to rub them, for they ached; his joints were old. “Fool!” he said to himself, and decided that to-morrow he'd go to Venice. She was too young, too dangerously and perversely fresh.

They drank their lemonade in silence. Pamela's face wore an expression of grave serenity which it touched and flattered and moved him to see. Still, he was a fool to be touched and flattered and moved.

“Let's go for a bit of a stroll,” he said, when they had
slaked their thirst. She got up without a word, obediently, as though she had become his slave.

It was breathless under the trees and there was a smell of damp, hot greenness, a hum and flicker of insects in the probing slants of sunlight. But in the open spaces the air of the heights was quick and nimble, in spite of the sun; the broom-flower blazed among the rocks; and round the bushes where the honeysuckle had clambered, there hung invisible islands of perfume, cool and fresh in the midst of the hot sea of bracken smell. Pamela moved here and there with little exclamations of delight, pulling at the tough sprays of honeysuckle. “Oh, look!” she called to him in her rapturous voice. “Come and look!”

“I'm looking,” he shouted back across the intervening space. “With a telescope. With the eye of faith,” he corrected; for she had moved out of sight. He sat down on a smooth rock and lighted a cigarette. Venice, he reflected, would be rather boring at this particular season. In a few minutes Pamela came back to him, flushed, with a great bunch of honeysuckle between her hands.

“You know, you ought to have come,” she said reproachfully. “There were such
lovely
pieces I couldn't reach.”

Fanning shook his head. “He also serves who only sits and smokes,” he said and made room for her on the stone beside him. “And what's more,” he went on, “‘let Austin have his swink to him reserved.' Yes, let him. How wholeheartedly I've always agreed with Chauncer's Monk! Besides, you seem to forget, my child, that I'm an old, old gentleman.” He was playing the safe, the prudent part. Perhaps if he played it hard enough, it wouldn't be necessary to go to Venice.

Pamela paid no attention to what he was saying. “Would you like this one for your buttonhole, Miles?” she asked, holding up a many-trumpeted flower. It was the first time she had called him by his christian name and the accomplishment of this much-meditated act of daring made her blush. “I'll stick it in,” she added, leaning forward, so that he shouldn't see her reddened cheeks, till her face was almost touching his coat.

Near and thus offered (for it was an offer, he had no doubt of that, a deliberate offer) why shouldn't he take this lovely, this terribly and desperately tempting freshness? It was a matter of stretching out one's hands. But no; it would be too insane. She was near, this warm young flesh, this scent of her hair, near and offered—with what an innocent perversity, what a touchingly ingenuous and uncomprehending shamelessness! But he sat woodenly still, feeling all of a sudden as he had felt when, a lanky boy, he had been too shy, too utterly terrified, in spite of his longings, to kiss that Jenny—what on earth was her name?—that Jenny Something-or-Other he had danced the polka with at Uncle Fred's one Christmas, how many centuries ago!—and yet only yesterday, only this instant.

“There!” said Pamela and drew back. Her cheeks had had time to cool a little.

“Thank you.” There was a silence.

“Do you know,” she said at last, efficiently, “you've got a button loose on your coat.”

He fingered the hanging button. “What a damning proof of celibacy!”

“If only I had a needle and thread. . . .”

“Don't make your offer too lightly. If you knew what a quantity of unmended stuff I've got at home. . . .”

“I'll come and do it all to-morrow,” she promised, feeling delightfully protective and important.

“Beware,” he said. “I'll take you at your word. It's sweated labour.”

“I don't mind. I'll come.”

“Punctually at ten-thirty, then.” He had forgotten about Venice. “I shall be a ruthless taskmaster.”

Nemi was already in shadow when they walked back; but the higher slopes were transfigured with the setting sunlight. Pamela halted at a twist of the path and turned back towards the Western sky. Looking up, Fanning saw her standing there, goldenly flushed, the colours of her skin, her hair, her dress, the flowers in her hands, supernaturally heightened and intensified in the almost level light.

“I think this is the most lovely place I've ever seen.” Her voice was solemn with a natural piety. “But you're not looking,” she added in a different tone, reproachfully.