Lettice & Victoria

PRAISE FOR SUSANNA JOHNSTON

‘The wit and charm of Susanna Johnston enchants the reader. Her writing comes from a tradition of British writers – Ronald Firbank, Howard Sturgis, Evelyn Waugh and Julia Strachey – particularly delightful voices, among which her own is instantly recognisable’
David Plante

‘Fresh yet sophisticated, naughty yet innocent,
Lettice & Victoria’s
short chapters appear like bright beads, enticing the reader’
Elisa Segrave

‘Susanna Johnston is the mistress of what the Surrealists called “Black Humour”, the queen of deliberate outrage and offensive scandal. Her characters, real or invented, most often both, will limp out of the pages bleeding, maimed and furious’ George Melly

‘Johnston is the thinking woman’s Evelyn Waugh’ Maureen Freely

‘A high-spirited romp … tremendously good fun’
Spectator

‘This is a scream with a dark side.  I adore the refreshingly flawed heroine who hasn't the foggiest idea what she’s up to half the time’
Anne Robinson

Thanks to Karen Sullivan and my old, late friend
Percy Lubbock, who lived near Lerici in Northern Italy.

Chapter 1

V
ictoria’s job was in Italy. Her mother, a tipsy invalid, lived in London and Victoria visited her as and when she was able to afford it. It was the second time she had travelled to and fro during her year of isolated employment. She knew the sort of night she was in for.

Body tilting sideways, dragged by the weight of her reclaimed suitcase (she had lost it once in Dover), Victoria boarded the train in Paris – bound for the South.

No need for bribes; it was not the holiday season and there was no competition for couchettes. The night ahead was to be long and the compartment, although designed for six
horizontal
travellers, was occupied by two others only. A mother and child. They were tentative; maiden voyagers. The mother, a weary Italian woman, cared kindly for her little girl who sat motionless – buttoned and bonneted. When the bonnet was removed, slowly and with gentle handling – bow untied with innocent skill – Victoria saw that the child, six years old
at least, had not a hair on her head. It was completely shiny – veins on show. Her eyes were enormous, surrounded by navy shadows; pale cheeks swollen and furry. The whole body was unnaturally fat.

All three lay quiet as they journeyed. From time to time the mother rose and answered needs. In the morning, as the train drew up at the first station after crossing the border into Italy, loud and compelling voices shouted down the length of the platform,
‘Café, panini, banana.’
Men with trays strapped to their shoulders handed pink, paper parcels in through the train window in exchange for coins or notes. As the three of them tackled their breakfast parcels, Victoria learned more about her companions.

The child was dosed with cortisone. Hair had fallen out and body had swelled. Friends and relations, backed by initiative from the parish priest, had paid for them to travel in search of help. A Paris doctor, renowned for curing, had offered them a free consultation, had written out prescriptions and given advice. Now they must bide their time.

There came a doubt, a hiccup, in Victoria’s maternal yearnings.

Chapter 2

A
lfredo, the butler, met her at the station. Oleanders were in bloom. The air was full of sun and the welcome was unqualified. Elena, a maid with odd eyes – tiny slits that cascaded with puss – crushed Victoria into embraces. Into her hands were pressed six sea horses; dry, perfectly formed, hard and curving. Elena’s ‘
fidanzato
’ Dante, a hunchback, picked them up each morning on the shore. There were tales to be told. The weather had been treacherous and Dante had been much thwarted by it. The cook, as usual, was a fiend but the
signorina
must wait for more details.

The
padrone
. He had been impossible. The
signorina
was to go to him at once. He had expected her the day before and had become impatient. She knew that to be unfair and untrue. He always tried it on.

Leaving her case for others to handle, she walked across the cool brown marble hall – first peeping into her luxurious
bedroom
. She was glad to be back, but frantic with fear of
loneliness
. How was she to meet a husband here?

In spite of the sickly child on the train her maternal instincts were still strong. The marble basin in her room, brownish orange like the hall, was enticing as was the four-poster bed – festooned in white mosquito netting. The sight of the
bedroom
refreshed her return and gave her hope.

The
padrone
was stationed, pampered but alone, in an upstairs room. His gargantuan, exposed stomach filled the scene. A tight silk dressing gown fell apart and a plaid rug slipped, leaving his belly bare. Nobody knew the truth about his eyesight but he led his life as a blind man. Shelves,
covering
each wall in the room, bulged with books, and from two windows the view down a terraced slope was of the sea – a sort of bay, mountains beyond. The ashes of his wife, long dead, filled an inch of a transparent urn on the mantelpiece –
lidded
and sealed. His mauve, podgy feet spilled over the sides of velvet slippers and the neck of a bottle glinted from under his armchair.

How did he collect and conceal bottles – blind as a bat? On a small mahogany table, near to where he sat, was planted his official ration. A carafe of warm and vinegary white Elba wine stood beside a glass and a plate of sugary biscuits, and his round face flopped into the folds of his chest as it fell forward.

Jerking it upwards as Victoria approached, he asked, ‘Is that you?’ He lifted a clean and little-used hand in greeting. ‘You’re late. We expected you yesterday.’

She had to shout. He was slightly deaf. It was tiring, raising her voice.

‘No. It was always today. How are you?’

The last thing he wanted to hear was of her time away.
Outside
interests were forbidden. There was a backlog to be dealt with: letters, papers, books to be read. His nephew had written to him and Victoria had carried the letter with her from
England
and had nearly lost it with her suitcase – that and a silk dressing gown, sizes larger than the one Laurence wore.

In a voice trained to reach the hard of hearing, she read the letter aloud to him. ‘Dear Uncle Laurence, I gather from
Victoria
that a new dressing gown might be an appropriate present so I send you one, using her as courier. I enjoyed meeting her when I handed the parcel over to her in London and I’m glad you have her living with you. Don’t let her escape. It’s not easy providing you with amanuenses at this distance.’

Had the nephew forgotten that she had to read letters about herself, trapped in captivity, aloud and at concert pitch?

She handwrote the one that Laurence dictated in reply.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m lucky to have Victoria. Have no fear. She has promised to stay with me for ever.’

She didn’t want to have to write that.

Not to admit on paper that she had no future. That she was to live for ever in a marble palace overlooking a remote bay in a foreign country, reading turgid volumes aloud, straining her voice.

‘Laurence.’ She spoke very loud, ‘Not for ever. That was never agreed.’

‘Well,’ impatiently, ‘say for a very long time. That will do. Say that. For a very long time.’ The matter dealt with, they turned to Froude’s
Life of Carlyle
. Victoria was only twenty. Laurence
over eighty. Dickens in the afternoon, Walter Pater at teatime. Laurence was an admirer of Pater and called upon Victoria to halt from time to time as she read to him from slow-moving works. ‘Take account of him, my dear. “To burn always with this hard gem-like flame to maintain the ecstasy is success in life.” Not always easy, but advice worth following. “Get as many pulsations as possible during the given time.”’

Laurence did not look as if he had ever experienced a single pulsation or, indeed, any moment of ecstasy. Nor did Victoria pulsate as, later, they listened to Mahler, massive and military, from a scratchy gramophone record on the terrace – Laurence permanently egg-bound and slightly drunk. He insisted on an egg dish at every meal.

Elena brought Victoria a breakfast tray the following
morning
. Strong coffee, a small circle of dry toast and apricot jam. Then she told of the cook’s treachery; rationing her underlings and ladling out unfair burdens of work. Dante was not allowed to enter the kitchen any more. The cook said he smelled of fish. ‘But,
Signorina
. He is a fisherman. How is he to earn his living?’

When Laurence had been placed, decent in the new dressing gown, on his chair by a twice-daily summoned male nurse, Victoria read the newspapers to him. They were airmail editions and always out of date. Firstly they had to be scrutinised. Laurence had fine feelings. The morning always started with a joke.

‘Any rash engagements?’ as she unfolded
The Times
.

Then, ‘Any interesting deaths?’

Often she came under fire for her, in Laurence’s pedantic view, mispronunciations.

‘How about this, Laurence?
Schizophrenic
girl attacks
Eros
?’

His clean hand shot up.

‘Two,’ he said, pained and puzzled. ‘Two mistakes.’ Both words, schizophrenic and Eros, had been given the wrong emphasis.

‘Women. Oh dear. Oh dear.’

Then, fearful of having in any way rebuffed her, he
sometimes
handed out a treat. Fishing in a fold of the dressing gown and bringing out a vast, round watch-face. ‘Did I ever tell you what it was that dear Henry James said when he gave me this on my twenty-fourth birthday?’

‘No, Laurence.’

He said, ‘Dear boy. If you knew how cruel you were to be twenty-four – you wouldn’t be it. You wouldn’t be it.’

Almost shyly he signalled to her to open a drawer in his desk. ‘Top drawer. On the right. A pile of letters from dear Henry. A long time ago.’

Also almost shyly, she went to the desk. A stack of letters in an educated hand lay there, one on top of the other. As
Victoria
flicked through them, as fast as she knew how, she noticed that each letter began ‘
Carissimo Ragazzo
’. Could it be that Laurence had ever qualified as such?

She picked one out and handed it to Laurence. He handled the priceless treasure and asked her to read the first line to him. She omitted the ‘
Carissimo Ragazzo
’ bit and told him that it referred to one of Henry James’s visits to America.

Laurence smiled very knowingly and, setting the letter down on his huge stomach, said, ‘Dear Henry was on a visit to New York. I remember it well. In that letter he told me that he had been entertained, I think, at the Century Club, by a group of young people. He became aware that at the end of the room there was an easel that held a painting hidden under a sheet. Poor Henry. He realised that they were going to present him with it. Go on. Find the place. Read aloud to me what he said.’ Victoria strained to find the right page. The letters were long.

She arrived at the relevant place and read, ‘It was unveiled and revealed a nudity of the most pronounced variety. What could I do? I couldn’t leave it behind for fear of offending the young people. Had I taken it home, my housekeeper (Mrs Paddington) would realise that her worst suspicions were true. She’d realise that my reasons for this trip to America were
dissolute
ones.’

Laurence gasped in contentment and seemed to sink into his past.

Victoria put the latter back in the drawer with intention of reading more to him if and when Laurence allowed.

But he changed the subject swiftly, swore that he was a
communist
and that, all considered, a coffee-coloured baby was a delightful thing and that, unfortunately, Thomas Hardy wrote very badly but that he enjoyed the little twists in the novels of Agatha Christie. He had known her well in the past.

Occasionally he would refer to his own works. Then he’d chuckle. ‘Balzac,’ he said once, ‘do you know what I wrote about Balzac?’

‘No, Laurence. I fear I don’t.’

‘
Balzac was incredible but his taste was abominable
. I actually said that in print. It agitated many readers. It was a long time ago, of course.’

What a fix to be in. And she was very young.