Three-Cornered Halo (5 page)

“Crumbs!” said Tomaso, derisively snorting.

“They're good enough for a glass case in the cathedral.”

The idea of a sanctified crumb in a reliquary was not without its appeal. “But Senorita,” said the Gerente, regretfully, “it is twenty years since Juanita died. Her last crumbs, true, are in the Duomo; the rest will surely by now have been swept away?”

On the other hand, said Tomaso, brightening a little, crumbs are not difficult to come by.

“You would not …?” The Gerente was genuinely shocked. “No, no, Tomaso, this I do not permit.” Besides, he said, relapsing into gloom, who, after all, would pay tourist prices for a box with one of Juanita's crumbs? And suspect crumbs at that.

“There must be other relics too,” said Miss Cockrill. “They must be small, of course, to go into the boxes. But—pieces of things: splinters of the table of course would be perfection, but the table's in the Duomo.”

“There are other tables,” said Tomaso again. Or, he added hastily, catching El Gerente's scandalised eye, there were many things she had used, stacked away up at the Colombaia by Innocenta's reverent hands; Lorenna had seen them—cups and plates that might be broken into little pieces, linen that could be cut into fragments, a shred in each box; silver spoons and forks—let him but have the melting down, said Tomaso, a gleam in his eye, of Juanita's table silver, and what an infinity of tiny relics he would fashion, just fit to repose on a nest of cotton-wool, each in its crystal box! It was extraordinary, he assured them limpidly, how much silver could be produced by melting down just one spoon or just one fork.

“Innocenta will ask a great price for the relics,” said the Gerente. “She drives a hard bargain. It is all for her ‘convenuto,' indeed, but that does not help us.” High hope was rising in him nevertheless. “Could we scrape up enough, Tomaso, for just one? For a fork, say, to begin with?”

“A fork! She will
give
us a fork. What price can she hope to get for a fork of Juanita's? If they would have fetched anything, she would have sold them long ago—'for the convenuto.'”

“She is keeping them, no doubt until the canonisation. When El Margherita is ‘Santa Juanita'—then the value of these things will be incalculable.”

“Very well, but she is not Santa Juanita now, she is an ugly old woman who made everyone's life a hell by living on a table. So I say that until she is canonised, a spoon or a fork is valueless to Innocenta.”

“In that case,” said Miss Cockrill, “little bits of them will be valueless to
you
.”

Tomaso and El Gerente were struck of a heap again at the extraordinary business acumen of Cousin Hat. It almost seemed that they were compensated for their disappointment by the privilege of witnessing her powers in action. “It is true, Senorita. Let but Juanita be even Beatified.…”

“Let but the Grand Duke do his duty, you mean,” said Tomaso, “and apply to Rome.…”

The Gerente went as white as his sun-tanned skin would allow him. “Tomaso, per Dios, do not speak these things aloud!”

“There is no one to hear,” said Tomaso, impatiently. “Do you think I have spies among the silver and gold in my safe? I say that the Grand Duke fails in his duty—and knows what he is about. He knows that the canonisation would bring profit for all to San Juan, he knows—too well for his peace of mind—what that would mean: the end of poverty and patience in San Juan, a people rich and strong, and intolerant of the yoke of the palace heavy on their necks; a people free to pause a little in the business of earning their living and educate themselves to a point where they recognise the hand of a tyrant pressing and squeezing down upon their little lives.… A people sick of paying taxes for the upkeep of a French harlot too vain of her figure to give San Juan an heir.…”

“Good gracious, Senor Tomaso,” said Cousin Hat, “you should be in Hyde Park!”

Tomaso laid his hand upon his gaily embroidered heart. “I thank you, Senorita.” He evidently supposed Hyde Park synonymous with the House of Lords.

“The Senorita will not repeat what she has heard?” said the Gerente anxiously, “Tomaso is a spirit of contradiction he has travelled widely, Senorita, he has been abroad——”

“Siena—Rome—Naples!” said Tomaso, nonchalantly magnificent. After all, it is two hundred miles to Naples, if not more.

“—and brought back new ideas. Tomaso is against the Grand Duke, he is against La Bellissima, against the Patriarca.…”

“I care nothing for the Grand Duke
or
the Grand Duchess,” said Tomaso, impatiently; “I am against not the tyrant but the tyranny. I care nothing for the Patriarch; I am against the use of power through superstition and ignorance. I say, let this old woman be canonised and wealth would come to San Juan and all would be well; and I say that you and I, Gerente—you with your men behind you, I with my knowledge and experience gained on my travels.…”

But the Gerente was rocking back and forth, his head in his hands. “For God's sake, Tomaso, speak no more of this! Senorita, hear nothing, remember nothing, he is mad, he speaks in jest, pay no heed to him.” He leapt to his feet. “Come, Senorita, I conduct you to your hotel.”

“Very well,” said Miss Cockrill. She got to her feet and gathered up her large brown handbag by its useful straps, and the green lined parasol. “Be wary of your friend,” she said to El Gerente, plodding beside him up the hill to the hotel. “The next stage they get to is collecting explosives and dabbling in home-made bombs.” It was one of the curses in this restless age, she added, of the craze for Do it Yourself.

But Tomaso, though even the Gerente did not know it, was far beyond the stage of Do it Yourself. For what was the use of anarchistic friends in Naples, if they couldn't produce for one a proper, ready-made bomb.…?

CHAPTER FOUR

O
N
the island of San Juan the word Colombaia does not signify a convent; nor, in fact, does it signify, except symbolically, a dovecote. Innocenta, coming into her inheritance, had been for some time doubtful of finding a use for it; but with the closing of the convenuto, many mothers were at a loss what profession to put their girls into, the Orphano no longer had Juanita's press-gang to place its female innocenti advantageously in life, as far as their souls at any rate were concerned—recruits therefore were forthcoming and, with the increasing influx of touristi, there was room on the island for expansion of business and for something more refined than the establishment down in the town. At Innocenta's, everything was done discreetly and comme il faut: the ankle-length, tight, frilled Spanish skirts that long ago had inspired Mr Cecil's Hipline, were fresh ironed every evening, the bodices were trim and exquisitely clean, it was one girl's stint each afternoon to make up the posies that tucked behind ears or into the smooth coils of hair. Innocenta bustled among them, her high-heeled shoes tip-tapping, intent on her business, only her soul remote. “Lollita, see to your stockings—last night the seams were like adders curving up your legs. Rosa, your shoulder-straps were showing outside the neck of your blouse, it is indecent. Inez, your room is untidy, a disgrace, you should take example by Tartine.…” Tartine was from a house in Paris; she had come over to the island for a working holiday and decided to stay—since the Grand Duke had married La Bellissima, all things French were the mode in San Juan, and she had proved very popular—knowing little of the language, she wasted no time in words. “And Lorenna—where is Lorenna?—Lorenna it is the Feast of St Castra the Virgin, we shall be busy.”

“But, Senora Innocenta—the little cheesecakes …”

“Never mind the little cheesecakes, they should be finished already. You will have to be on duty, Lorenna, and that's all there is to it.” But her kind heart melted at sight of the reproachful brown eyes. “You shall take any tourists from the hotel, and as long as they are suitable you have my permission to cry.”

“Oh,
thank
you Innocenta!”

“Young Americanos and elderly Inghlesi—nobody else, though, and if you have seen them before, you're not even to try; nobody will stand it a second time, unless perhaps it may be an elderly Englishman.”

“I promise, Innocenta.”

“But mind,” said Innocenta, as Tomaso had known that one day she would, “I can't afford to keep on a girl who does nothing but make cheesecakes and cry.”

“If Tomaso would come,” said Lorenna, “I would not cry.”

“And you would not make cheesecakes either, so there would be no profit to anyone, since Tomaso is
persona grata
here—except to Tomaso. In any event, my child, tonight he will not come. He and El Gerente have their heads together over some conspiracy and once those two start plotting, it goes on till dawn. How Pepita puts up with that Guido Bussaca,” said Innocenta impatiently, “no one can imagine. And the same will be said of you, Lorenna, if you marry this good-for-nothing firebrand from the Joyeria. A fine thing!—a well-brought-up Catholic girl, contemplating marriage with such a one. You will break your father's heart.”

“My father need not trouble,” said Lorenna, sulkily. “Tomaso does not believe in marriage.” She recited loyally: “Religion is power in the hands of the few over the credulous majority.”

“Well, see that you put your crying act over on the credulous majority this evening,” said Innocenta, “or as far as the Colombaia is concerned, your Tomaso will have you on his hands, marriage or no. Not believe in marriage!” she confided, later, to Lollita and Tartine. “If she is not careful, that child will find herself tied to Tomaso di Goya and Living in Sin.” She lowered her voice and her dimpled face blushed rose pink as she spoke the dreadful words. If only, if only, Juanita's canonisation could be got under way, how different all this would be! What profits flowing in!—and from the vulgar soil of hard cash, what exquisite flowers of blessing and benefit, blossoming for them all! A Tomaso growing rapidly rich would have no time to poke his long gipsy nose into the sacred affairs of religion and state; would be happy to settle for a good little, pretty little, pious little wife to manage his family and home. Lollita need work no longer to support her old, crippled grandfather, injured in a smuggling affair forty years ago and embarrassingly determined ever since, not to die; Inez could be released from her articles of apprenticeship and go off down to the Barrequitas colombaia where—for she was
not
a nice-minded girl—her true métier lay; Tartine could go back to Paris where her naughty heart was; and she, Innocenta—oh! to be free from all this entanglement of cheesecakes and shoulder-ribbons, love and marriage and heartache, scattered face-powder, bright lipstick smeared on paper tissues, the scent of posies, of perfumes, of hair-oil, the stench of hot irons on steaming starched organdie frills.… To walk again behind walls that echoed no longer to day-long chatter, to night-long murmuring, to music and laughter and sentimental song: that folded instead, into their pink-washed arms a flock of young neophytes eager only for contemplation and prayer; each with her generous dot from a family whose business burgeoned and prospered in the general weal. If Juanita had but a halo—how good life would be again!

And here, as though in answer to prayer, was the Senorita Inghlesi, coming through the narrow, wrought-iron gate of the pink-washed wall, her arms full of books.

Mr Cecil, meanwhile, had lost no time in renewing his friendship with the palace. Though he could easily have done so, he gave no notice of his coming: let others crave audiences of the Grand Duke, let others apply months ahead for rooms at the Bellomare—Mr Cecil on the island of San Juan, came and went as he listed. But he had been careful to array himself in the most conservatively British of his shirts and flannels and self-designed, hand-painted ties: he had long ago found El Exaltida not susceptible to the delicate compliment of San Juan-inspired holiday attire. The Grand Duke himself wore Saville Row suits and was reported by the disaffected to maintain a double in London, for no purpose whatsoever but to stand-in as tailor's dummy; he was known for a fact to ask what people should have their coats brushed for, the implication being that when they got to that state, one surely just threw them away? With the suits, he wore an Old Wykehamist tie and five or six very large rings.

The road to the palace winds steeply, uphill all the way. Two carriage horses, charmingly arrayed in wide straw hats, each, like those of Winsome and Miss Cockrill, adorned with a wreath of flowers, tugged Mr Cecil gaily up—for the Juanese love all dumb creatures and no horse would be asked to undertake a task he would not most willingly perform. Above, as they went, the palatio glittered in fretted white marble against the clear blue sky: a frosted cobweb on the topmost spire of the Cathedral in the Sea. At the arched inner gateway, Mr Cecil alighted and went with his cloaked and sabred guard, up through the terraced gardens to a patio where, by a water-lily pool, El Exaltida sat with La Bellissima, his wife.