Three-Cornered Halo (23 page)

Major Dick was present when the message arrived and accepted it with relief. Later, Cousin Hat went up to the sufferer's bedroom and said that really she was not surprised, last night Winsome had looked quite dotty, she had better stay where she was; she herself was going off on an expedition with Dick and the others to the village of Toscanita. Winsome heard the clip-clop of horses' hooves as the carriages assembled outside the front door, the hooting of the tourists as they piled themselves in (the widows packed into one carriage for their safety's sake). The hooves clip-clopped away. She got up and dressed.

And Mr Cecil also remained behind. Mr Cecil takes little pleasure in rural delights and he had been, moreover, charmingly piqued in his ever-sensitive curiosity, by the tenor of Tomaso's leave-takings the night before. Alone among the group, Mr Cecil had known of a plot to doctor the Cellini thurible with an essence of roses: and why, Mr Cecil had asked himself, should the originator of the plot be gazing so meaningly into poor Foley's stupefied face and insisting that she keep to some arrangement regarding that same thurible? He himself, Tomaso had insisted, again most meaningfully, would not be there. Mr Cecil decided that he, on the other hand, certainly would be there: and accordingly, that morning at eleven o'clock, presented himself, all eager-eyed at the sacristy door of the cathedral.

Those who love the Duomo di San Juan, and they are not many, are apt to exalt it above all other cathedrals: though chiefly, they acknowledge, on the score of the saving in travel. For why, ask these Phillistines, dash from Bologna to Sienna, from Sienna to Ravenna, from Ravenna to Rome, when by staying quietly in one place you may see bricks as bloodily red as any in Bologna, a forest of American convicts' legs more fiercely black-and-white striped than those of Sienna, mosaics more hideous and a front more putti-ed with babies' bottoms than in all Ravenna or Rome? The Duomo of course was built by old Juan the Pirate—unique, perhaps, in having been erected in his own lifetime, to his own glory, by a man who had just canonised himself a saint (for the Patriarch of that day had had no foolish prejudices about applications to Rome). Having impressed half a dozen men of, unfortunately, varying talent, by the simple expedient of kidnapping them from the Italian ports where they happened to be working, he provided an armed guard to protect them from one another, and bade them set to. A native of Parma came out on top with a general outline of Romanesque basilica, in bright red brick (the guide book is surely incorrect in its figures?—32,453 metres by 6,420—for this would make it twice the length of St Peter's and anyway a very odd shape), surrounded by graffiti pavements depicting scenes from the life of the saint in a version which that deplorable old party would certainly not have recognised, had he lived to see them completed.

But the other protagonists struggled not in vain. Venice contributed domes of assorted sizes and peppered with nice, bright mosaics, there is a patchwork tower, à la Giotto, and of course the façade—the most somtous, the guide book assures us, of any in Europe. ‘Let's now going up to the frontal,' continues this work in its pleasantly informal way; and, conducting us thither, encourages with cries of uninhibited complacency our admiration of San Juan's supremacy in a sort of Swedish smörgesbrod of marble. ‘Entering through portles of bronce into the specious interior, lets now revolving from left to right. Here we are hit by lots of thinks most marvelous and suggestive of which now we give to the reader the history the most briefly and faithful is possible …' The tomb of the Founder, for example, credited to Canova (but not by anyone outside San Juan, the more so as he would at the time it was fashioned, have been about nine years old), the great marble font, piratical loot but
not
the work of either of the Pisanos, the murals of Goya; and, in a wrought-iron case, the Cellini thurible—which really is by Cellini.…

El Anitra came shuffling out at Mr Cecil's summons, his great flaming nose hanging like a beacon over the sad, thin mouth, the whole face mottled with colour, purple and scarlet as the feathers of the bird whose name he bore; the white, raised scar gleaming on the frontal bone. “I regret, Senor, infinitely; the thurible is removed for cleaning before the fiesta, it is not on view.”

“Ooh, you naughty fib!” said Mr Cecil. “One of the tourists is viewing it this minute, I've just seen her arrive.”

“Ah, yes, the lady; that is by special arrangement.”

Oh, but one had a special arrangement oneself, said Mr Cecil. Last night he had been up at the pavilion: the Archbishop was doubtless aware of it?—and the Grand Duke.…

“You have a signed note?” said the Archbishop wretchedly.

Mr Cecil had no signed note. Understanding that Miss Foley had an appointment, the Grand Duke had simply told him to go along too.

“I will speak to the lady,” said the Arcivescovo.

But that, protested Mr Cecil, there was utterly, but utterly, no need to do. He was a friend of Miss Foley, she wouldn't mind one bit. He followed the old man resolutely across the sanctuary and in through the sacristy door.

The base of the censer was a large thing, as big as a rose bowl and enormously heavy, of solid gold wrought into a design of upward-bearing angels. Mr Cecil watched with malicious glee the Archbishop's efforts to manœuvre it surreptitiously into the lady's bag, the lady for some reason not co-operating; though he had understood it to have been all arranged, the night before. He succeeded at last and Mr Cecil, having foiled an attempt on Winsome's part to leave the bag behind in the sacristy, emerged at last with her out into the sunshine. “Do let me carry your bag for you. It seems dreadfully heavy.”

Quite
all right, said Winsome. She could manage it herself.

“But, my dear, what on earth have you been buying? Gold bricks?”

No, no, it was just some—just some guide books.…

“Very nobbly guide books,” said Mr Cecil, eyeing the distended bag with a mischievous eye. He tripped along gaily beside her across the cobbled cathedral square. “Where shall we go now? Let's sit down and have an ice, and we can look at your new guide books together.”

But Winsome had suddenly developed a passion to pop in (alone if it had been humanly possible but it was not) to the Joyeria; and, having with many explanations and excuses scribbled a note which she concealed in the shopping bag with the nobbly guide books, dragged herself there with her old man of the sea; and, after looking vaguely at some brooches which, said Mr Cecil had
not
been worth so imperative a visit, abruptly came away. This time he was content to allow her to carry her own shopping bag; it seemed so very much lighter.

Alone in his shop, Tomaso locked away his little bomb carefully and turned his attention to the thurible. It was no longer true, of course, that the work could be made undetectable; to arrange the mechanism so that the bomb operated only when the censer was swung forward, was a different matter from concealing a pellet of essence. But until the event, no one would think of examining the bowl except possibly the old man and this foolish woman and neither of those two would understand what he saw. And after the event—there would be nothing left to examine. A tragedy, he thought, the artist for a moment overcoming the anarchist, to destroy so lovely, so wonderfully lovely, a thing. He turned it over in tender hands, tracing with his delicate fingertip the intricacy of moulding, laying his brown cheek against broad surfaces of gold made smooth as silk by the polishing hands of time. I will sketch it, he thought, and one day I will make another, as lovely if I can, to replace it. It should be his life's hobby, his relaxation in the days of power to come.

There was a note with the censer: it was in Juanese, not very well constructed or properly spelt, though she spoke it fluently enough, and tremendously underlined. Writing in a
great hurry, under difficulties,
she said. Had not intended to bring the thing, but
had not been able to explain this to the Archbishop.
So she had brought it.
But this was the end,
she
would do no more.
Well, all right, he thought, you need do no more—about the censer. She had known too much of the original plan, it had been necessary to involve her so that when the assassination took place, she should, to save her own skin, keep her mouth shut. But now she was involved, and as to taking the thing back, he could take it back himself, easily enough. He was as free as anyone else to pray in Juanita's chapel, he would go along with a couple of disinterested friends as future witnesses; he would put the parcel down somewhere, the Archbishop could pick it up. He thought with satisfaction of the forgery in the book, of the carrying of the censer, under the very eye of Senor Thetheelah; his Senorita del Opale was safe enough—when the time came she would not talk.

A tourista came in. It was the fat man, the leader of the grouppa, the Major. Tomaso slid his work beneath the counter. “Bienvenida, Senor. Buon giorno.”

“Yes, well, er, bwonjorny,” said the Major. He broke into French. “Dayzeery ern reeng.”

“A reenga?” said Tomaso in English, not to be outdone. Sure thing, he said. With happy. One tiny!

“Well, by Jove, er, not too tiny,” said the Major, thinking back to the noded knuckles of his affianced.

Tomaso was mystified. They looked it up in the dictionary ‘Tiny: small, miniature, minute.' “Poor feller means, ‘one minute,'” said the Major, going off into a guffaw in Tomaso's face; but Tomaso laughed too, an excellent little joke. He congratulated the Major warmly upon what was evidently a conquest, promised to keep his secret, and repaid the guffaw by selling him at exorbitant price, an opal twenty times inferior to Winsome's own.

And that night there was a party at the Joyeria; or above it, rather, in the white-washed roof patio, looking out over the crooked-tiled roofs of Barrequitas and away to the sea. Tomaso had arrived suddenly at the Bellomare with pressing invitations to Senorita Cockereel, to her niece Senorita Foley, Senor Thetheelah—to those friends who had been so kind as to patronise his shop.… Major Bull, alas, he knew from a chat with him earlier in the day—when they met
in the street,
said Tomaso, prodigiously winking—was obliged to remain with his grouppa; but for the rest, there was always a reaction after Domenica di Boia, it was his habit to ask in a few friends, would they not come too and enjoy a real Juanese evening? To Winsome he muttered an urgent aside; this was the only way he could arrange to see her, she must come, something had gone wrong.…

The patio was enchanting, cool and white and clean as a whistle, bright with great bunches of flowers in coloured clay pots; a table was heaped with fruit and cheeses and spicy little Juanese dishes, there was a cold, clear, sweet white wine in a great carafe. After the fever of the night before, it was wonderfully peaceful: two or three pretty girls, a couple of the charming plump little middle-aged dumplings that Innocenta (not present) typified; half a dozen smiling brown men, the inevitable cat. They sat and talked, idly, in the dying sunshine, they spoke of dancing, a girl got up and, natural as a flower, did a few steps to show the Senorita what she meant, another girl shouldered her aside, laughing, and repeated the steps with variations.… A man produced a guitar and strummed a few bars for the girls to dance to, broke away from the dance and began to play a tune of his own. A girl took up the tune, made words to it, teasing the dancers for being deprived of their music; broke, still singing, into a dance of her own.… Winsome, next to Tomaso who lounged easily in the doorway leading from the room to the balcony, leaned back into the shadows. “What is this ‘trouble'?”

“What trouble? Oh, yes, the ‘trouble.' There is no trouble; only the trouble of transporting my valuables down to the boat in the reeds on the Toscanita shore. You said you would help me; I cannot go down there alone.”

“You brought me here on a trick!”

“It is all a trick,” he said, laughing. “You and I are playing a little trick on San Juan; to get you to come here, I played a little trick on you.”

“Well, I am
not
coming down to Toscanita.”

“I am not asking you to do anything, Senorita, but to come with me. I must have an excuse. I cannot be seen going down there alone, I am a man from Barrequitas, I do not belong there. But if I care to take a tourista to see the bay by moonlight…”

“By moonlight?” she said sharply.

“A carriage is waiting. You long to see Toscanita by the light of the moon.”

“I couldn't possibly go, what would my cousin think?”

“She would think that you long to see Toscanita by the light of the moon.”

“Alone with
you
!” said Winsome: unwisely.

“It would not be the first time you had been alone with me. By the way, your Major,” said Tomaso, innocently, “was also in my shop today …”

Cousin Hat viewed with some amazement her cousin's sudden enthusiasm for a drive to Toscanita. “Whatever does this fearful dago want with her?” she said uneasily to Mr Cecil as, with a dreadful assumption of gaiety, Winsome followed Tomaso across the patio and down through the Joyeria out into the street. “He wants to sell her something, it can't be anything else.” Mr Cecil thought that upon the whole it could not be anything else. “But I'll go down and wish them God speed.” He followed them out.

There was a carriage, sure enough, waiting below, with a nodding horse, wearing for the party a wreath of drooping flowers. Tomaso turfed the dozing driver off his seat and hauled her up, with some ungainly struggling, to sit beside him; and took up the reins. From the balcony above them, Cousin Hat looked rather anxiously down and he laughed and waved as they clattered away, flourishing the long, swingy whip, its lash permanently wound, since no Juanese driver would dream of using such a thing. Up the steep cobbled hill, the horse tugging away gallantly, delighted, as is the way of Juanese horses, to be of use. “This whole thing is blackmail,” said Winsome, angrily.