Chapter Twenty-Four

 

Divinely innocent, a sensuality panting up through incandescence into pure ecstasy; in the intervals, the tender and yet wittily cultured lasciviousness of Mary Esdaile - that was what Sebastian had imagined it would be, what he had looked forward to.  Certainly not those hands, deliberate in the darkness,  that almost surgical research of the essential shamelessness.  Nor yet the delicate gluttony of those soft lips that would suddenly give place to teeth and pointed nails.  And not those imperiously whispered commands; not those spells of silent, introverted frenzy, those long-drawn agonies, under his timid and almost horrified caresses, of a despairing insatiability.

      In his fancy, love had been a kind of gay, ethereal intoxication; but last night's reality was more like madness.  Yes, sheer madness; a maniac struggling in the musky darkness with another maniac.

      'Twin cannibals in bedlam ...’ The phrase came to him as he was examining the red and livid mark of teeth on his arms.  Twin cannibals, devouring their own identity and one another's; ravening up reason and decency; obliterating the most rudimentary conventions of civilization.  And yet it was precisely there, in that frenzy of the cannibals, that the real attraction had lain.  Beyond the physical pleasure lay the yet more rapturous experience of being totally out of bounds, the ecstasy of an absolute alienation.

      Mrs Thwale had put on her dove-grey dress and was wearing round her neck the little gold and ruby cross which her mother had given her on the day she was confirmed.

      'Good-morning, Sebastian,' she said, as he came into the dining-room.  'We seem to have the breakfast table to ourselves.'

      Sebastian looked with panic at the empty chairs and the unfolded napkins.  For some reason he had taken it for granted that Mrs Ockham would be there to chaperone this dreadfully embarrassing encounter.

      'Yes, I thought ... I mean, the journey ... They must have been pretty tired ...'

      From her private box at the comedy Mrs Thwale looked at him with bright ironic eyes.

      'Mumbling again!' she said.  'I shall really have to buy that birch!'

      To cover his confusion, Sebastian went over to the sideboard and started to look at what was under the lids of the silver dishes on the hotplate.  Of course, what he ought to have done, when he saw that she was alone, was to go and kiss her on the nape of the neck and whisper something about last night.  And perhaps it wasn't too late even now.  Press the muzzle of the revolver against the right temple, count ten, and then rush in and do it.  One, two, three, four ... Porridge plate in hand, he advanced towards the table.   Four, five, six ...

      'I hope you slept well,' said Mrs Thwale in her low clear voice.

      He looked at her in dismay, then dropped his eyes.

      'Oh, yes,' he muttered, 'yes ... very well, thanks.'

      There was no question any more of that kiss.

      'You did?' Mrs Thwale insisted with an air of astonishment.  'In spite of the owls?'

      'The owls?'

      'You don't mean to say,' she cried, 'that you didn't hear the owls?  Lucky boy!  I wish I slept as soundly as you do.  I was awake half the night!'

      She took a sip of coffee, delicately wiped her mouth, bit off a morsel of her toast and butter and, when she had swallowed it, wiped her mouth again.

      'If I were you,' she said, 'I'd made it a point today to go to San Marco and look at the Fra Angelicos.'

      The door opened and Mr Tendring entered and, a moment later, Mrs Ockham.  They too had failed to hear the owls - even though Mrs Ockham hadn't been able to go to sleep for hours, because of worrying about that wretched drawing.

      Yes, that wretched drawing, that stinking drawing.  In his impotence Sebastian indulged in a childish outburst of bad language as he ate his buttered eggs.  But calling names brought him no nearer to the resolution of his difficulties, and instead of clearing the mental atmosphere, blasphemy and obscenity merely intensified his mood of oppression by making him feel ashamed of himself.

      'Are you going to send for the police?' Mrs Thwale enquired.

      Sebastian's heart seemed to miss a beat.  Keeping his eyes fixed upon his plate, he stopped chewing so as to be able to listen with undivided attention.

      'That's what Granny wants to do,' said Mrs Ockham.  'But I won't have it yet.  Not till we've made a really thorough search.'

      Sebastian renewed his mastication - too soon, as it turned out; for Mrs Thwale was all for having the little girl brought up to the house for cross-questioning.

      'No, I'll go and talk to the parents first,' said Mrs Ockham.

      'Thank God!' Sebastian said to himself.

      That meant that he probably had the whole of the day before him.  Which was something.  But how on earth was he going to set to work?

      A touch on the elbow startled him out of his abstraction; the footman was bending over him, and on the proffered salver were two letters.  Sebastian took them.  The first was from Susan.  Impatiently he put it in his pocket, unopened, and looked at the second.  The envelope was addressed in an unfamiliar hand, and the stamp was Italian.  Who on earth...?  And then a hope was born, grew and, in an instant of time, was transformed into a conviction, a positive certainty that the letter was from that man at the art gallery; explaining that it had all been a mistake; apologizing profusely; enclosing a cheque.... Eagerly he tore open the envelope, unfolded the single sheet of cheap commercial paper and looked for the signature.  'Bruno Rontini,' he read.  His disappointment found vent in sudden anger.  That fool who believed in Gaseous Vertebrates, that creeping Jesus who tried to convert people to his own idiocies!  Sebastian started to put the letter away in his pocket, then decided after all to see what the man had to say.

      'Dear Sebastian,' he read.  'Returning yesterday, I heard the news, distressing on more than one account, of poor Eustace's death.  I don't know if your plans have been modified by what has happened; but if you are staying on in Florence, remember that I am one of the oldest inhabitants as well as some sort of a cousin, and that I shall be very happy to help you find your way about.  You will generally find me at my apartment in the mornings, in the afternoon at the shop.'

      'At the shop,' Sebastian repeated to himself ironically.  'And he can damned well stay there.'  And then all at once it occurred to him that, after all, this fool might be of some use to him.  A dealer in books, a dealer in pictures - the chances were that they knew one another.  Weyl might be ready to do the other fellow a favour; and Uncle Eustace had said that old man Bruno was pretty decent in spite of his silliness.  Pensively, Sebastian folded up the letter and put it in his pocket.