Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

As soon as breakfast was over, Sebastian slipped out of the house and almost ran down the hill to where the tramcars stopped.  He had to see Bruno, to see him as soon as possible and tell him what had happened.

      His mind, as he stood there waiting for the train, wavered back and forth between an overpowering sense of guilt and the aggrieved and plaintive feeling that he had been exposed to moral pressures which it was beyond the power of any ordinary human being to withstand.  He'd broken his promise - the promise that (to crown wrongdoing with humiliation) he'd been so boastfully confident of being able to keep.  But then who could have imagined that Weyl would be there?  Who could possibly have anticipated that the fellow would behave in that extraordinary way?  Inventing a story for him to tell, and fairly forcing it upon him!  Yes, forcing him to lie, he kept repeating in self-justification.  Forcing him against his better judgement, against his will; for hadn't he really been on the point of coming out with the truth, there in the corridor, in front of everybody?  By the time train arrived, Sebastian had half persuaded himself that that was how it had been.  He had just been opening his mouth to tell Mrs Ockham everything when, for some unknown and sinister reason, that beast of a man barged in and forced him to break his promise.  But the trouble with that story, he reflected as they rattled along the Lungarno, was that Bruno would listen to it and then, after a little silence, very quietly ask some question that would make it collapse like a pricked balloon.  And there he'd be, clutching the shameful vestiges of yet another lie and still under the necessity of confessing the previous falsehood.  No, it would be better to start by telling Bruno the miserable truth - that he's started by trying to run away and then, when he'd been cornered, had felt only too grateful to Weyl for showing him the way to break his promise and save his precious skin.

      But here was Bruno's corner.  The tram stopped; he got off and started to walk along the narrow street.  Yes, at bottom he'd actually been grateful to the man for having made the lie so easy.

      'God, I'm awful,' he whispered to himself, 'I'm awful!'

      The tarry smell of Bologna sausages came to his nostrils.  He looked up.  Yes, this was it - the little pizzicheria next to Bruno's house.  He turned in under a tall doorway and began to climb the stairs.  On the second landing he became aware that there were people coming down from one of the higher floors; and suddenly some sort of soldier or policeman came into sight.  With a fatuous assumption of majesty, he strutted along the landing.  Sebastian squeezed against the wall to let him pass.  A second later three more men turned the corner of the stairs.  A man in uniform led the way, a man in uniform brought up the rear, and between them, carrying his ancient Gladstone bag, walked Bruno.  Catching sight of Sebastian, Bruno immediately frowned, pursed his lips to indicate the need of silence and almost imperceptibly shook his head.  Taking the hint, the boy closed his parted lips and tried to look blank and unconcerned.  In silence the three men passed him, then one after another turned and disappeared down the stairs.

      Sebastian stood there, listening to the sound of the receding footsteps.  Where his stomach should have been, there was an awful void of apprehension.  What did it mean?  What on earth could it mean?

      They were at the bottom of the stairs now, they were crossing the hall.  The abruptly there was no more sound; they had walked out into the street.  Sebastian hurried down after them and, looking out, was in time to see the last of the policemen stepping into a waiting car.  The door was slammed, the old black Fiat started to move, turned left just beyond the sausage shop and was gone.  For a long time Sebastian stared unseeingly at the place where it had been, then started to walk slowly back by the way he had come.

      A touch on the elbow made him start and turn his head.  A tall bony young man was walking beside him.

      'You came to see Bruno?' he said in bad English.

      Remembering his father's stories of police spies and agents provacateurs, Sebastian did not immediately answer.  His apprehension was evidently reflected on his face; for the young man frowned and shook his head.

      'Not have fear,' he said almost angrily.  'I am Bruno's friend.  Malpighi - Carlo Malpighi.'  He raised his hand and pointed.  'Let us go in here.'

      Four broad steps led up to the entrance of a church.  They mounted and pushed aside the heavy leather curtain that hung across the open door.  At the end of the high vaulted tunnel a few candles burned yellow in a twilight thick with the smell of stale incense.  Except for a woman in black, praying at the altar rails, the building was empty.

      'What happened?' Sebastian whispered when they were inside.

      Struggling with his broken English and incoherent with emotional distress, the young man tried to answer.  A friend of Bruno's - a man employed at police headquarters - had come last night to warn him of what they were going to do.  In a fast car he could easily have got to the frontier.  There were lots of people who would have taken almost any risk to help him.  But Bruno had refused; he wouldn't do it, he simply wouldn't do it.

      The young man's voice broke, and in the half-darkness the other could see that big tears were running down his cheeks.

      'But what did they have against him?' Sebastian asked.

      'He'd been denounced for being in touch with some of Cacciaguida's agents.'

      'Cacciaguida?' Sebastian repeated; and with a renewal of that horrible sense of inner emptiness he remembered the elation he had felt as he stuffed the twenty-two banknotes into his wallet, his stupid boasting about all that his father had done to help the anti-fascists.  'Was it - was it that man Weyl?' he whispered.

      For what seemed an enormously long time the young man looked at him without speaking.  Wet with tears and strangely distorted, the narrow elongated face twitched uncontrollably.  He stood quite still, his arms hanging loosely by his sides; but the big hands kept clenching and unclenching, as though animated by a tortured life of their own.  And at last the silence was broken.

      'It was all because of you,' he said, speaking very slowly and in a tone of such concentrated hatred that Sebastian shrank away from him in fear.  'All because of you.'

      And advancing a step, he gave the boy a back-handed blow in the face.  Sebastian uttered a cry of pain and staggered back against a pillar.  His teeth bared, his fists raised, the other stood over him menacingly; then, as Sebastian pulled out a handkerchief to stanch the blood that was streaming from his nostrils, he suddenly dropped his hands.

      'Excuse,' he muttered brokenly, 'excuse!'

      And quickly turning, he hurried out of the church.

      By a quarter to one Sebastian was back again at the villa, with nothing worse than a slightly swollen lip to bear witness to his morning's adventures.  In the church he had lain down across two chairs until his nose stopped bleeding, then had given his face a preliminary washing in holy water and gone out to buy himself a clean handkerchief and finish off his ablutions in the lavatory of the British Institute.

      The goat was there again as he climbed the hill; but Sebastian felt obscurely that he had no right to stop and look at it, felt at the same time too horribly guilty even to wish to indulge in poetical fancies.  Up the road, through the gate and between the stately cypresses he walked on, miserably, wished he were dead.

      On the low wall of the terrace in front of the villa, at the foot of the pedestal on which a moss-grown Pomona held up her cornucopia of fruits, the Queen Mother was sitting all alone, stroking the little dog on her knees.  Catching sight of her, Sebastian halted.  Would it be possible, he wondered, to tiptoe past her into the house without being heard?  The old woman suddenly raised her head and looked sightlessly up into the sky.  To his astonishment and dismay, Sebastian saw that she was crying.  What could be the matter?  And then he noticed the way Foxy was lying across her lap - limply, like one of those brown furs that women wrap round their necks, the paws dangling, the head lower than the body.  It was obvious the dog was dead.  Feeling now that it would be wrong to sneak past unobserved, Sebastian started to walk across the crunching gravel with steps as heavy as he could make them.

      The Queen Mother turned her head.

      'Is that you, Daisy?'  And when Sebastian gave his name, 'Oh, it's you, boy,' she said in a tone of almost resentful disappointment.  'Come and sit here.'  She patted the sun-warmed stucco of the wall, then pulled out an embroidered handkerchief and wiped her eyes and her wet rouged cheeks.

      Sebastian sat down beside her.

      'Poor little Foxy ... What happened?'

      The old woman put away her handkerchief and turned blindly towards him.

      'Didn't you know?'

      Sebastian explained that he had spent the whole morning in town.

      'That fool, Daisy, thinks it was an accident,' said the Queen Mother.  'But it wasn't.  I know it wasn't.  They killed him.'  Her thin, rasping voice trembled with a ferocious hatred.

      'Killed him?'

      She nodded emphatically.

      'To revenge themselves.  Because we thought it was that child who had stolen the drawing.'

      'Do you think so?' Sebastian whispered in a tone of dismay.  Bruno arrested, and now the little dog killed - and all because of what he had done or left undone.  'Do you really think so?'

      'I tell you, I know it,' rasped the Queen Mother impatiently.  'They gave him rat poison - that's what it was.  Rat poison.  Veronica found him after breakfast, lying dead on the terrace.'

      Suddenly she gave vent to a loud and horribly inhuman cry.  Picking up the small limp body on her knees she held it close, pressing her face against the soft fur.

      'Little Foxy,' she said brokenly.  'Little Foxy-woxy....'  And then the puckered grimace of despair gave place once again to an expression of intense hatred.  'The beasts!' she cried.  'The devils!'

      Sebastian looked at her in horror.  This was his fault, this was all his fault.

      The hum of an approaching car made him turn his head.

      'It's the Isotta,' he said, thankful to have an excuse to change the subject.

      The car swung round past the front steps and came to a halt immediately in front of them.  The door swung open and Mrs Ockham jumped out.

      'Granny,' she called excitedly, 'we've found one.'  And from under her coat she brought out a little round handful of orange fur with two bright black eyes and a black pointed muzzle.  'His father's won three First Prizes.  Here!  Hold out your hands.'

      Mrs Gamble stretched out a pair of jewelled claws into the darkness, and the tiny puppy was placed between them.

      'How small!' she exclaimed.

      'Four months old,' said Mrs Ockham.  'Wasn't' that what the woman told us?' she added, turning to Mrs Thwale, who had followed her out of the car.

      'Four months last Tuesday,' said Mrs Thwale.

      'He's not black, is he?' questioned the old woman.

      'Oh, no!  The real fox-colour.'

      'So he's Foxy too,' said the Queen Mother.  'Foxy the Ninth.'  She lifted the little creature to her face.  'Such soft fur!'  Foxy IX turned his head and gave her a lick on the chin.  The Queen Mother uttered a gleeful cackle.  'Does he love me, then?  Does he love his old granny?'  Then she looked up in the direction of Mrs Ockham.  'Five Georges,' she said, 'seven Edwards, eight Henries.  But there's never been anybody the ninth.'

      'What about Louis XIV?' suggested Mrs Ockham.

      'I was talking about England,' said the Queen Mother severely.  'In England they've never got further than an eighth.  Little Foxy here is the first one to be a ninth.'  She lowered her hands.  Foxy IX leaned out from between the imprisoning fingers and sniffed inquisitively at the corpse of Foxy VIII.

      'I bought my first Pomeranian in 'seventy-six,' said the Queen Mother.  'Or was it 'seventy-four?  Anyhow, it was the year that Gladstone said he was going to abolish the income tax - but he didn't, the old rascal!  We used to have pugs before that.  But Ned didn't like the way they snored.  He snored himself - that was why.  But little Foxy-woxy,' she added in another tone, 'he doesn't snore, does he?'  And she raised the tiny dog again to her face.

      Noiselessly, like a ghost, the butler appeared and announced that luncheon was served.

      'Did he say lunch?' said the Queen Mother; and without waiting for anyone to help her, she almost sprang to her feet.  With a little thud the body of Foxy VIII fell to the ground.  'Oh dear, I'd quite forgotten he was on my lap.  Pick him up, boy, will you?  Hortense is making a little coffin for him.  She's got a bit of an old pink satin dress of mine to line it with.  Give me your arm, Veronica.'

      Mrs Thwale stepped forward and they started to walk towards the house.

      Sebastian bent down and, with a qualm of repulsion, picked up the dead dog.

      'Poor little beast!' said Mrs Ockham; and as they followed the others, she laid a hand affectionately on Sebastian's shoulder.  'Did you have a nice morning in town?' she asked.

      'Quite nice, thanks,' he answered vaguely.

      'Sight-seeing, I suppose,' she began, and then broke off.  'But I'd quite forgotten.  There was a wire from your father after you'd gone.'  She opened her bag, unfolded the telegraph form and read aloud: '"ACCEPTED CANDIDACY FORTHCOMING BY-ELECTION RETURNING IMMEDIATELY ARRANGE SEBASTIAN MEET ME FOUR PM WEDNESDAY NEXT THOMAS COOK AND SON GENOA."  It's a shame,' she said, shaking her head.  'I thought we'd keep you here till the end of the holidays.  And oh dear! there won't be any time to get your evening clothes.'

      'No, I'm afraid not,' said Sebastian.

      No time, he was thinking, to get either suit; for the dinner jacket he had ordered at Uncle Eustace's tailor - ordered, yes, and paid for - was to have been tried on for a first fitting the very day he had to be in Genoa.  It had all been for nothing - all these miseries he had gone through, all this guilt, and Bruno's arrest, and this wretched little dog.  And meanwhile there was the problem of Tom Boveney's party, still unsolved and growing more agonizingly urgent with every passing day.

      'It's a shame!' Mrs Ockham repeated.

      'What is?' asked the Queen Mother over her shoulder.

      'Sebastian's having to leave so soon.'

      'No more mum-mbling lessons,' said Mrs Thwale, lingering a little over the word.  'But perhaps he'll be relieved.'

      'You'll have to make the best of such time as is left you,' said the Queen Mother.

      'Oh, we will, we will,' Mrs Thwale assured her, and uttered her delicate little grunt of laughter.  'Here we are at the steps,' she went on gravely.  'Five of them, if you remember.  Low risers and very broad treads.'