Three-Cornered Halo (14 page)

For Miss Cockrill was weary: weary and oppressed. The scene on the gallows rock had revolted her, she saw the world suddenly as ugly and cruel and life as infinitely sad. I am old, she thought; and weary and lonely and happiness has passed me by. A dreary girlhood, an aimless middle-age: and now … There was still much that she could have found to delight in; and yet here she was chained for the rest of her days to a companion apparently sent by heaven for no purpose but to rob her of all pleasure in these last things. Let her but enjoy a book, and Winsome poked her long nose into it too and said that it was clever, no doubt, but was it all, frankly, quite Worth While? Let them see a mackerel sky, and Winsome gave way to fancies about mummy angels tucking cherubs into pink feather beds, let them engage for a moment in conversation with a wit, a scholar, a sophisticate, a cross old village woman bringing round the milk—and Winsome thought that Underneath they were all just simple, lonely, heart-achey people like Ourselves, crying out to be Loved: let them but pass a damned cyclamen in a pot, thought Cousin Hat to herself, almost in tears, and it reminded Winsome of fairies dancing. Till I die! I have got her with me till I die! Her shaking fingers scrabbled up handfuls of the curling, pointed, sun-dry olive leaves from the ground and screwed them into dust, she shuddered and bit her lip in an effort to preserve her self-control. Beside her, the Major sat chewing on his white moustache, his prominent pale blue eyes gazing placidly out to sea. What bliss, what happiness, to sit for ever with a companion who could look at an expanse of salt water without calling it God's Own, or thinking of it as Our Lady's Sequined Mantle.…

“Charming thing poor Winnie said t'other day 'bout the Mediterranean,” said the Major dreamily. “Said that from heaven it must look like a bowl of forget-me-nots. Bowl of forget-me-nots!” He mused over it. “Blue, y'know. Yellow bits in the middle—sun dancing on the water. Get it?”

Miss Cockrill could not help laughing and the laughter did her good, it broke up the tension of her little crise de nerfs and left her only rather shaken at its intensity. “Oh, Dick,” she said, “don't you go whimsical on me too!”

The Major came-to with a start. “What? What?” He turned a little and glanced at her white face. “I say … Bit grey round the gills. Feeling all right, old girl?”

“Yes, I'm all right. It's only that … Sometimes, you know, Dick, one gets weary and a bit frightened; a woman all alone in life like me.”

“You're not alone, Hat,” said the Major; referring to Winsome.

Miss Cockrill, however, took it differently. “I know, Dick. And if things had been different …” Dear old Dick! He was not the world's brightest intelligence but one had grown used to him over the years; and in her mood of weakness she felt that it would be in itself a paradise, only to have someone to rely upon for the endless little difficulties and decisions, the mountain of trivial burden which now, alone, she carried for two. “But it's no good. I won't wish upon you a menage à trois, and Winsome won't ever marry now.” She had taken off the straw hat and speared it with a hat-pin to the ground beside her and now she put her grey head against his shoulder. “You've been very faithful, Dick.”

“By Jove, old girl, not like you t'give way like this,” said the Major, growing very red.

She lifted her head and her hands played again with the dry leaves. “No, it isn't, is it? But … Well, there it is. I can't leave Winsome now, she couldn't manage on the money she's got, not in the way we manage by living together; and she couldn't understand anything less, she's a silly woman, really, for all her pretensions; she couldn't cope with economy, not real, hard economy. No. I promised her mother and I must stick to my bargain. But we could have been very happy all these years, you and I.”

“By Jove, yes, old girl, of course, of course.…”

“Oh, dear, Dick!—to sit down just sometimes to a meal with someone who didn't keep dashing to the window to Share with the Little Feathered Friends of St Francis (who flourished in a country where there isn't a single bird left because they've killed and eaten them all). To be able to go out and just dig in the garden without Trusty-the-Spade, or set about the weeds without Twin brothers Hoe and Spud! Not to mention running over the gravel with Hogarth.…”

“Hogarth?”

“The Rake's Progress,” said Cousin Hat, bleakly.

“Poor-Winnie-sensitive-soul …”

“She is not a sensitive soul,” said Hat. “If she were, she'd know that for years every word she has uttered has scraped on my nerves like a knife skidding over a plate.”

Nerves all to bits, poor old girl. “Need a rest, Hat, ought to have a change.”

“I
am
having a rest, you fool—and a change. And Winsome is all wide-eyed wonder because she can pick a bunch of grapes off a vine, and drools over a dirty old skeleton in a Streatham-High-Street dress. If only,” said Miss Cockrill desperately, “Juanita would give her wretched sign and get herself canonised and Winsome could sell thousands of copies of her translations and be rich and independent—and you and I could be free!”

But perhaps poor Hat herself was not so very sensitive either; or she might have observed that, gallantly though he puffed and protested, such an outcome was no longer quite unreservedly the heart's desire of her faithful Dick.

The grouppa, in the meantime, bereft of their shepherd, had wandered off to inspect the Vaporetto de Muerte: missing him dreadfully, for most of the ladies were setting their (widows') caps at him and Fuddyduddy was incensed at his relaxing attentions which, surely, had been bought and paid for in advance. A hoard of colourful urchins followed like gadflies in their wake, telling lies about the financial positions of their families, small brown hands thrust out. “Where is Bull? He ought to be here to shoo these creatures away.”

“Shoo them away yourself,” said Gruff; poor Gruff, who, thanks to the tender care of Aunt Grim, would never have a pack of small boys of her own; or even a Fuddyduddy.

But Fuddyduddy had his hands rammed down on the money in his pockets and could not take them out for fear of creating an impression that he might be about to distribute largesse. Fortunately, the lady novelist was ready to distribute instead and did so, right, left and centre, only careful to keep an account for the income tax people at home. “Research,” she explained briefly, listening with keen delight to family histories which would have astonished the devoted and deeply indulgent relatives concerned. Even the Back-Homes were mollified at hearing of the living conditions behind the facade of luxurious fiesta window-dressing; and, would the Juanese but have admitted the original of the Goya-decorated gallows to be in the U.S.A., would have instituted a Help-for-San-Juan Day, without delay.

Mr Cecil was enraptured with the Vaporetto de Muerte. She lay at her moorings, dingily black and silver, tugging gently on a single tether like a large, richly caparisoned regimental goat. Bunches of ostrich plumes were fixed to every available post, between them hung wreaths, hideously ornate, of innumerable tiny coloured beads, strung on wire. The bulkheads were plastered with photographs, in the da-guerrotype manner, of loved ones who by this means had crossed the Styx from Barrequitas to the mainland—varying in age and beauty but unanimous in somewhat startling choice of background, for the single backcloth of the Barrequitas photographer, portrays an aged donkey peering over a bridge at a waterfall far below, apparently with suicidal intent. Beneath his melancholy nose, generations of bambinos roll on bamboo table-tops with every evidence of acute strangulated hernia; the brides simper, the old ladies glare from behind their abundant moustaches, the gentlemen strike attitudes of bashful grace: all with eyes glazed from two minutes' unwinking attention to the Juanese birdie. Mr Cecil read out the tributes of the living to those thus petrified into immortality, with hoots of happy laughter; and, forgetful of their own annual contributions to the In Memorium columns at home, the widows tittered in sychophantic chorus. He left them and wandered off into the sable-hung bowels of the boat.

Tomaso had brought the Arcivescovo back to the vaporetto and, in the absence of captain and crew, a-feast on the island, commandeered the one small saloon, below decks, and there laid the old man on a slatted wooden seat, with a rolled-up cloak beneath his head. Others had come forward with tentative offers of help; but with the Grand Duke in his present mood, both Church and State must be on the hop not to offend, and if Tomaso di Goya and his renegade friends cared to stick out their revolutionary necks and take the responsibility off their hands, so much the better. He sent off a message summoning the Gerente and, dismissing his followers, sat down by the still semi-conscious old man for an hour's constructive thought.

By the time Mr Cecil arrived outside their door, the Archbishop was better and, fortified with arguadiente, deep in agitated counsel with his new friends. That his execution would shortly take place appeared to be accepted fact, at least between himself and the Gerente: El Gerente, indeed, being lavish with promises to make the whole business when it came as little personally disagreeable to his Grace as possible. He only wished that he could have put Mario on the job; but Mario alas! was sailing tomorrow with a cargo of contraband including some heroin, and one dared not send anyone less responsible, drugs were always so tricky. Jose, unfortunately was
not
to be relied upon, but Jose it would have to be: the trouble was, he was apt to lose his head and let go at the critical moment and it did rather muck things up. However, said the Gerente cheerfully, at the Archbishop's age and in his state of health, whatever happened he wouldn't last very long; and in hanging, really that was all that counted. Of course, he added, if Juanita would only turn up trumps …

“Juanita will give no sign,” said Tomaso, elaborately impatient. “Count that out.”

“We must continue to pray,” said the Archbishop.

“Of course. And if she answers, Arcivescovo, well and good. But …” He looked down at his black-rimmed fingernails, searching for some path of ingress into the old man's pious and simple mind. “Why should she answer? This is an affair of men. How dare we ask the saints to intervene?”

“It is not for myself, my son. Who am I to demand a miracle from heaven, to save my worthless life? It is for the honour of El Margherita herself. It is a challenge to her.”

“You are too humble, Arcivescovo.”

“No man can be too humble in the face of heaven.”

“Ah, no. And, therefore—may not Juanita feel this too? Is it likely that for her own glorification, she will perform a miracle at the bidding of Juan Lorenzo?”

“If she gives no sign, then we must take it that she is content to wait for recognition.”

“But
we
can't wait,” said the Gerente, bursting out with it. “Tomaso and I can't wait.” Tomaso threw him a warning glance and he amended: “San Juan el Pirata can't wait.”

“I confess I would like to have known before I died—”

“Exactly, Arcivescovo:
you
can't wait either. But once Juanita were recognised—ah, then you could go to God with a peaceful mind, knowing your island was safe in her hands, knowing that from all over the world touristi would be flocking in—”

“Pilgrims,” said Tomaso, kicking him under the table.

“—pilgrims would be flocking in: from Italy and Spain, each having a share in our glory, from America and England and France and Germany, all eager to witness the ceremonies. We could spin the ceremonies out for—oh, as much as a year: start a whole new season, perhaps, in this way, popularise San Juan for the months of the English winter. The trade!” cried El Gerente, carried away, his ankles black and blue from Tomaso's assaults on them, but oblivious of it all. “The smuggling! Think what the tourist hotels alone must import. And the funghi! My wife's brother, Arcivescovo, who is in the kitchens at the Bellomare, he has made a discovery. By a mistake, some funghi were fed to a party of English touristi, which had been intended for the hotel milch goats. Guiseppe waited quite anxiously, he, alone, knowing what had happened; but instead of their dying off in agony, the touristi enquired a day or two later whether they might not again try this interesting dish. Arcivescovo, these toadstools are now gathered by the basketful by my sister's children, dried in a disused fowl house and sold off in the streets at great price for these fools to take home to America and England in little paper bags. Let the tourist trade prosper and my brother-in-law will be a rich man one day. And then there is the wine. A whole business has grown up of expressing wine from the Toscanita grapes; who, if the touristi don't continue to flourish, will consume this horrible stuff? And then, Tomaso, our snuff-boxes.…”

“It is very true,” said Tomaso, his eyes darting daggers at his partner, “that material prosperity would follow Juanita's canonisation. But we do not think of that. It is the spiritual gain, Arcivescovo. Innocenta, for example,” said Tomaso piously, “reckons that with two really bumper years at the Colombaia, she could afford to reopen the convent.”

“As to that, my son, I have discussed the matter with both the Grand Duke and El Patriarca and both are of opinion that this dream of Innocenta di Perliti should be discouraged.”

“Discourage the convenuto!”

“El Beatitud considers that as a convenuto the Colombaia would be a loss to San Juan. That sink in the town is fit only for casuals from the mainland, come over on the vaporetto for the day trip. If Innocenta retires—where, says El Beatitud, will there be to go? He thinks not so much of the young ones as of the married men, respectable fellows like yourself, Gerente, with your families to think of. And the Grand Duke is anxious about the touristi, what will they think if we can offer them but one colombaia?—and that a wretched hole-in-the-wall in Barrequitas.”