Nightwork

23

The trip back to Porto Ercole the next morning was a quiet one. Neither of us spoke much. I was busy with my own thoughts and I suppose Evelyn was busy with hers. She sat far over on her side of the car, her hands in her lap, her face composed and grave. Pat, unmentioned and thousands of miles away in snowbound Vermont, was a dark presence in the sunny Italian morning. I had told Evelyn I would go and see her. “The sooner the better,” Evelyn had said. I would have to call Fabian and tell him I was arriving in New York. By way of New England.

When we got to the Pellicano, they told me that Quadrocelli had been in looking for me the night before. I asked the girl at the desk to get him for me on the phone. “Welcome home,” he said, when the connection was made. “Did you enjoy Rome?”

“Moderately,” I said.

“You are becoming blasé.” He laughed. He did not sound like a man whose plant had recently been sabotaged. “It is a beautiful morning,” he said. “I thought today would be nice for the trip to Genuttri. The sea is gentle. Would you like to go?”

“I have to ask my friend.” Evelyn was standing beside me at the desk. “He wants to take us for a ride on his boat. Do you want to go?”

“Why not?” Evelyn said.

“We’d be delighted,” I said into the phone.

“Fine. My wife will pack us a picnic hamper. She will not accompany us. She despises boats. She has transmitted this trait to her daughters, alas.” His voice was cheerful as he described the non-admiration for life at sea of the women of his family. “I must always be on the lookout for other companionship. Do you know where the Yacht Club is in the harbor?”

“Yes.”

“Can you be there in an hour?”

“Whenever you say.”

“An hour. I will be there getting the boat ready. Bring sweaters. It can get cold…”

“By the way, how bad was the damage at the plant?” I asked.

“Normally bad,” he said. “For Italy. Do you know anybody who wants to buy a highly up-to-date, slowly failing printing establishment?”

“No,” I said.

“Neither do I.” He was laughing merrily as he hung up.

The idea of sailing to the island on the horizon attracted me. Not so much for the cruise itself as for the fact that for a full afternoon Evelyn and I would not be alone together. I decided to invite Quadrocelli and his wife to dinner with us. That would take care of the evening, too.

Evelyn went up to our room to change for the outing and I put in a call for Fabian. While waiting for the call to come through, I read the morning’s Rome Daily American. In a column of social notes, there was an item about David Lorimer. He was being transferred to Washington. A farewell party was being arranged in his honor. I threw the paper away. I didn’t want Evelyn to read it.

“Holy God, man,” Fabian said, when I finally reached him. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Noon.”

“In Italy,” Fabian complained. “It’s six o’clock in the morning here. What civilized human being wakes up a friend at six in the morning?”

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I just didn’t want to make you wait for the good news.”

“What good news?” His voice was suspicious.

“I’m coming back to the States.”

“What’s so good about that?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. Private business. Can you hear me? This connection is lousy.”

“I can hear you,” he said. “All too well.”

“The real reason I’m calling is to find out where you want me to leave the car.”

“Why don’t you wait where you are and I’ll come over and we can discuss this calmly.”

“I can’t wait,” I said. “And I’m calm right now.”

“You can’t wait.” I could hear him sigh at the other end of the wire. “All right – can you drive the car to Paris? Tell the concierge at the Plaza-Athénée to put it in a garage for me. I have some business to look into in Paris.”

He could have said someplace more convenient – like Fiumicino. He was a man who had some business to look into everywhere – Rome, Milan, Nice, Brussels, Geneva, Helsinki. He was being purposely inconvenient to discipline me. But I was in no mood to argue with him.

“Okay,” I said. “Paris it will be.”

“You know you’ve ruined my day, don’t you?”

“There’ll be other days,” I said pleasantly.

When we drove down to the harbor and parked the car, I could see Quadrocelli coiling rope on the deck of his little white cabin cruiser, tied fore and aft to the dock of the Yacht Club. Most of the other boats in the harbor were still fitted out with their winter tarpaulins and the dock was deserted except for him.

“Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main,” Evelyn sang as we walked toward the dock. She had made me stop at a pharmacy and buy some Dramamine. I had the feeling she shared Mrs Quadrocelli’s low opinion of the sea. “Are you sure you’re not going to drown me when you get me out on the water?” she said. “Like what’s-his-name in An American Tragedy when he finds out Shelley Winters is pregnant.”

“Montgomery Clift,” I said. “I’m not Montgomery Clift and you’re not Shelley Winters. And the picture wasn’t called An American Tragedy. It was A Place in the Sun.”

“I just said it for laughs.” She smiled sweetly at me.

“Some laughs.” But I smiled back. It wasn’t much of a joke, but it was a joke. At least it was a sign she was ready to make an effort not to be gloomy for the rest of our time in Europe. The long haul through France would have been hard to take if she just sat in her corner of the car, silent and withdrawn, as she had done on the trip that morning from Rome. After the phone call to Fabian I had told her I had to drive to Paris and asked her if she wanted to come along.

“Do you want me to?” she said.

“I want you to.”

“Then so do I,” she had said flatly.

Quadrocelli saw us as we approached the dock and jumped off the boat spryly and hurried to meet us, robust and nautical in his shapeless corduroys and bulky blue seaman’s sweater. “Come aboard, come aboard,” he said, bending to kiss Evelyn’s hand, then shaking mine heartily. “Everything is ready I have arranged all. The sea, as you notice, is calm as a lake and the well-advertised blue. The picnic basket is secured. Cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, fruit, wine. Adequate nourishment for sea-going appetites…”

We were about twenty yards away from the boat when it blew up. Bits and pieces of wood and glass and wire flew around us as we all dove to the pavement. Then everything became deadly quiet. Quadrocelli stood up slowly and stared at his boat. The stern line had been torn away and the stem was drifting at an odd angle from the dock, as though the boat had been broken in two just aft of the helm.

“Are you all right?” I asked Evelyn.

“I think so,” she said in a small voice. “How about you?”

“Okay,” I said. I stood up and put my arm around her. “Giuliano…” I began.

He did not look at me. He kept staring at his boat. “Fascist!,” he whispered. “Miserable Fascist!.” People were now streaming out of the buildings across the wide quay and we were surrounded by a crowd of citizens, all talking at once, asking questions. Quadrocelli ignored them. “Take me home, please,” he said to me quietly. “I do not believe I trust myself to drive. I want to go home.”

We shouldered our way through the crowd to our car. Quadrocelli never looked back at his pretty little boat, which was sinking slowly now into the oily waters of the harbor.

In the car he began to shiver. Violently, uncontrollably. Under his tan, his face took on a sickly pallor. “They could have killed you, too,” he said, his teeth chattering. “If you had arrived two minutes earlier. Forgive me. Forgive all of us. Dolce Italia. Paradise for tourists.” He laughed eerily.

When we reached his house, he wouldn’t let us go in with him, or even get out of the car. “Please.” he said, “I must have a discussion with my wife. I do not wish to be rude, but we must be alone.”

We watched him walk slowly, looking old, across the driveway and to the door of his house. “Oh, the poor man,” was all that Evelyn said.

We drove back to our hotel. We didn’t say anything about what had happened to anyone. They would find out soon enough. We each had a brandy at the bar. Two dead, I thought, one in New York, one in Switzerland and one near miss in Italy. Evelyn’s hand was steady as she picked up her glass. Mine wasn’t. “To sunny Italy,” Evelyn said. “O sole mio. Time to go, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?”

“I would,” I said.

We went up and packed our bags and were paid up and out of the hotel and on the road north in twenty minutes. We didn’t stop, except for gas, until after midnight, when we had passed the border and were in Monte Carlo. Evelyn insisted on seeing the casino and playing at the roulette table. I didn’t feel like gambling, or even watching, and sat at the bar. After a while she came back, smiling and looking smug. She had won five hundred francs and paid my bar bill to celebrate. Whoever would finally marry her would marry a woman with sound nerves.

Evelyn drove out to Orly with me in the rented car with a chauffeur. The Jaguar was in the garage, waiting for Fabian. Evelyn was going to stay in Paris a few more days. She hadn’t been in Paris for years and it would be a shame just to pass through, she said. Anyway, I was going to Boston and she was going directly to New York. She had been carefree and affectionate on the trip through France. We had driven slowly, stopping often to sight-see and indulge in great meals outside Lyon and in Avallon. She had taken my picture in front of the Hospice de Beaune, where we toured the wine cellars, and in the courtyard at Fontainebleau. We had spent the last night of the trip just outside Paris at Barbizon, in a lovely old inn. We had dined gloriously. Over dinner I had told her everything. Where my money had come from, how I had met up with Fabian, what our arrangement was. Everything. She had listened quietly. When I finally stopped talking, she laughed. “Well,” she said, “now I know why you want to marry a lawyer.” She had leaned over and kissed me. “Finders keepers, I always say,” she said, still laughing. “Don’t worry, dear. I am not opposed to larceny in a good cause.”

We slept all night in each other’s arms. Without saying it to each other, we both knew a chapter in our lives was coming to an end and tacitly we postponed the finish. She asked no more questions about Pat.

When we reached Orly, she didn’t get out of the car. “I hate airports,” she said, “and railway stations. When it’s not me that’s going.”

I kissed her. She patted my cheek maternally. “Be careful in Vermont,” she said. “Watch out for changes in the weather.” “All in all,” I said, “it’s not been a bad time, has it?” “All in all, no,” she said. “We’ve been to some nice places.” My eyes were teary. Hers were brighter than usual, but dry. She looked beautiful, tanned and refreshed by her holiday. She was wearing the same dress she had worn when she arrived in Porto Ercole.

“I’ll call you,” I said, as I got out of the car. “Do that,” she said. “You have my number in Sag Harbor.” I leaned into the car and kissed her again. “Well, now,” she said softly.

I followed the porter with my luggage into the terminal. At the desk, I made sure I had all the checks for my bags.

I caught a cold on the plane and was sniffling and running a fever when we landed at Logan. The customs man who came up to me must have taken pity on my condition because he merely waved me on. So I didn’t have to pay any duty on the five Roman suits. I took it as a favorable omen to counterbalance the cold. I told the taxi driver to take me to the Ritz-Carlton, where I asked for a sunny room. I had learned the Fabian lesson of the best hotel in town, if I had learned nothing else. I sent down for a Bible and the boy brought up a paperback copy. The next three days I spent in the room, drinking tea and hot rum and living on aspirin, shivering, reading snatches from the Book of Job, and watching television. Nothing I saw on television made me happy I had returned to America.

On the fourth day my cold had gone. I checked out of the hotel, paying cash, and rented a car. The weather was wet and blustery, with huge dark clouds scudding across the sky; not a good day for driving. But by then I was in a hurry. Whatever was going to happen I wanted to happen soon.

I drove fast. The countryside, in the changing northern season, was dead, desolate, the trees bare, the fields muddy, shorn of the grace of snow, the houses closed in on themselves. When I stopped once for gas, a plane flew overhead, low, but unseen in the thick cloud. It sounded like a bombing raid. I had crossed this stretch of the country, at the controls of a plane, hundreds of times. I touched the silver dollar in my pocket.

I reached Burlington just before three o’clock and went directly to the high school. I parked the car across the street from the school and turned the motor off and waited, with the windows all turned up to keep out the cold. I could hear the three o’clock bell ring and watched the flood of boys and girls surge through the school doors. Finally, Pat came out. She was wearing a big, heavy coat and had a scarf around her head. With her myopic eyes I knew my car, forty yards away from her, was only a blur to her and that she couldn’t tell whether anyone was in it or not. I was about to open the door and get out and cross over to her when she was stopped by one of the students, a big fat boy in a checkered mackinaw. They stood there in the gray afternoon light, talking, with the wind whipping at her coat and the ends of her scarf. The window on my side was beginning to mist over from the condensation of my breath in the cooling car, and I rolled it down to see her better.

She and the boy seemed in no hurry to be on their way, and I sat there looking at her for what seemed like a very long time. Consciously, I made myself assess, at that one moment, what I felt on the deepest level, as I watched her. I saw a nice enough little woman, ordinarily pretty, who in a few years would look austere, who had no connection with me, who could not move me to joy or sorrow. There was a faded, almost obliterated memory of pleasure and regret.

I turned on the ignition and started the car. As the car moved slowly past her and the boy, they were still talking. She did not look at the car. They were still standing there, on the windswept, darkening street, when I took a last look back in the rear-view mirror.

I drove to the Howard Johnson Lodge and put in a call for Sag Harbor.

“Love, love!” Fabian was saying disgustedly. We were in the living room of his suite in the St Régis. As usual, as in anyplace he lived even for a day, it was littered with newspapers in several languages. We were alone. Lily had had to go back to England. I had driven directly to New York. I had told Evelyn on the phone that I would get to Sag Harbor the next day. “I thought that you had at least gotten over that,” Fabian was saying. “You sound like a high-school sophomore. Just when everything is going so smoothly, you’ve got to blow up the whole thing…”

Remembering the morning on the dock at Porto Ercole, I was displeased with his choice of words. But I said nothing. I was going to let him talk himself out.

“Sag Harbor, for Christ’s sake,” he said. He was pacing up and down, from one end of the big room to another. Outside there was the sound of the traffic on Fifth Avenue, reduced to a rich hum by thick walls and heavy drapes. “It’s just a couple of hours from New York. You’ll wind up with a bullet in your head. Have you ever been in Sag Harbor in the winter, for God’s sake? After the first fine flush of passion dies down, what do you expect to do there?”

“I’ll find something,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just read. And let you work for me.”

He snorted and I smiled.

“Anyway,” I said, “I’ll probably be safer in America surrounded by millions of other Americans than in Europe. You saw for yourself – I stick out like a lighthouse among Europeans.”

“I had hoped to be able to teach you to blend into the scenery.”

“Not in a hundred years. Miles,” I said. “You know that.”

“You’re not that unteachable,” he said. “I saw certain signs of improvement even in the short time we were together. By the way, I see you went to my tailor.”

I was wearing one of the suits from Rome. “Yes,” I said. “How do you like it.” I nipped the lapel of the jacket.

“A welcome change,” he said, “from the way you looked when I met you. You got a haircut in Rome, too, I see.”

“You never miss anything, do you?” I said. “Good old Miles.”

“I dread to think of what you’re going to look like after a visit to the barber at Sag Harbor.”

“You make it sound as though I’m going to live in the wilderness. That part of Long Island is one of the swankiest places in the United States.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, still pacing, “there are no swanky places, as you so elegantly put it, in the United States.”

“Come on, now,” I said. “I remember you come from Lowell, Massachusetts.”

“And you come from Scranton, Pennsylvania,” he said, “and we both should do our damndest to forget the two misfortunes. Righto, marriage. I grant you that. You’re pleased at the prospect of having a son. I’ll grant you that, even though it’s against all my principles. Have you ever taken a good look at American kids today?”

“Yes. They’re endurable.”

“That woman must have bewitched you. A lady lawyer!” He snorted again. “God, I should have known I should never have left you alone. Listen, has she ever been to Europe? I mean before this – this episode?”

“Yes” I said.

“Why don’t you make this proposition to her – You get married. Righto. But she tries living in Europe with you for a year. American women love living in Europe. Men chase them until they’re seventy – especially in France and Italy. Let her talk to Lily. Then she can decide. Nothing could be fairer than that, could it? Do you want me to talk to her?”

“You can talk to her,” I said, “but not about that. Anyway, it’s not only the way she feels. It’s the way feel. I don’t want to live in Europe.”

“You want to live in Sag Harbor.” He groaned melodramatically. “Why?”

“A lot of reasons – most of them having very little to do with her.” I couldn’t explain to him about Angelo Quinn’s paintings and I didn’t try.

“At least can I meet the lady?” he asked plaintively.

“If you don’t try to convince her,” I said. “About anything.”

“You’re some dandy little old partner, partner,” he said. “I give up. When can I meet her?”

“I’m driving out tomorrow morning.” – “Don’t make it too early,” he said. “I have some delicate negotiations starting at ten.”

“Naturally,” I said.

“I’ll explain everything I’ve been doing over dinner. You’ll be pleased.”

“I’m sure I will,” I said.

And I was, as he talked steadily across the small table late that evening at a small French restaurant on the East Side, where we had roast duckling with olives and a beautiful, full Burgundy. I was considerably richer, I learned, than when I had watched his plane take off from Cointrin with Sloane’s coffin in the hold. And so, of course, was Miles Fabian.

It was nearly six o’clock by the time we got to Evelyn’s house, the rural, gentle landscape through which we passed neat in the seaside dusk. Fabian had checked into a hotel in Southampton on the way, and I had waited for him while he bathed and changed his clothes and made two transatlantic telephone calls. I had told him that Evelyn expected him and was readying a guest room for him, but he had said, “Not for me, my boy. I don’t relish the idea of being kept awake all night by sounds of rapture. It’s especially disturbing when one is intimate with the interested parties.”

I remembered Brenda Morrissey reporting at breakfast on the same phenomenon in Evelyn’s apartment in Washington and didn’t press him.

As we drove up to the house, the outside lamp beside the door had snapped on. Evelyn was not going to be taken by surprise.

The lamp shed a mild welcoming light on the wide lawn in front of the house, which was built on a bluff overlooking the water. There were copses of second-growth scrub oak and wind-twisted scraggly pine bordering the property, and no other houses could be seen. In the distance there was a satiny last glow of evening on the bay. The house itself was small, of weathered, gray, Cape Cod shingle, with a steep roof and dormer windows. I wondered if I would live and die there.

Fabian had insisted upon bringing two bottles of champagne as a gift, although I had told him that Evelyn liked to drink and was sure to have liquor in the house. He did not offer to help as I unloaded my bags and picked them up to carry them into the house. He considered two bottles of champagne the ultimate in respectable burdens for a’man in his position.

He stood looking at the house as though he were confronting an enemy. “It is small, isn’t it?” he said.

“It’s big enough,” I said. “I don’t share your notions of grandeur.”

“Pity,” he said, grooming his mustache. Why, I thought, surprised, he’s nervous.

“Come on,” I said.

But he held back. “Wouldn’t it be better if you went in alone?” he said. “I could take a little walk and admire the view and come back in fifteen minutes. Aren’t there some statements you want to make to the lady alone?”

“Your tact does you credit,” I said, “but it isn’t necessary. I made all the required statements to the lady on the telephone from Vermont.”

“You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

“I’m sure.” I took his arm firmly and led him up the gravel path to the front door.

I can’t pretend that the evening was a complete success. The house was charming and tastefully although inexpensively furnished, but small, as Fabian had pointed out. Evelyn had hung the two paintings I had bought in Rome and they dominated the room, in a peculiar, almost threatening way. Evelyn was dressed casually, in dark slacks and a sweater, making the point, a little too clearly, I thought, that she wasn’t going to go to any extra lengths to impress the first friend of mine she had ever met. She thanked Fabian for the champagne, but said she wasn’t in the mood for champagne and started for the kitchen to mix martinis for us. “Let’s save the champagne for the wedding,” she said.

“There’s more where that comes from, dear Evelyn,” Fabian said. “Even so,” Evelyn said firmly, as she went through the door.

Fabian glanced thoughtfully at me, looked as though he was about to, say something, then sighed and sank into a big leather easy chair. When Evelyn came back with the pitcher and glasses, he played with his mustache, ill at ease, and only pretended to enjoy his drink. I could see he had had his taste buds ready for the wine.

Evelyn helped me to carry my bags upstairs to our bedroom. She was not one of those American women who believe that the Constitution guarantees that they will never be required to carry anything heavier than a handbag containing a compact and a checkbook. She was stronger than she looked. The bedroom was large, running almost the full width of the house, with a bathroom leading off one side of it. There was an oversized double bed, a vanity table, bookcases, and two cane and mahogany rocking chairs set in an alcove. I noticed that there were lamps, well placed for reading.

“Do you think you’ll be happy here?” she asked. She sounded uncharacteristically anxious.

“Very.” I took her in my arms and kissed her.

“He’s not very happy, your friend,” she whispered, “is he?”

“He’ll learn.” I tried to make my voice sound confident. “Anyway, he’s not marrying you. I am.”

“One hopes,” she said ambiguously. “He’s power-hungry. I recognize the signs from Washington. His mouth tightens when he’s crossed. Was he in the Army?”

“Yes.”

“A colonel? He seems like a colonel who’s sorry the war ever ended. I bet he was a colonel. Was he?”

“I never asked him.”

“I get the impression that you’re very close.”

“We are.”

“And you never asked him what his rank was?”

“No.”

“That’s a funny kind of very close,” she said, slipping out of my arms.

Fabian was standing in front of the mantelpiece, on which stood his half-drunk martini. He was staring at Angelo Quinn’s painting of the main street. He made no comment when we came down the stairs and into the living room, but reached, almost guiltily, for his glass. “As for refreshments,” he said, falsely hearty, “let me buy you two dear children a magnificent seafood dinner. There’s a restaurant in Southampton I…”

“There’s no need to go all the way to Southampton,” Evelyn said. “There’s a place right near here in Sag Harbor that serves the best lobsters in the world.”

I saw Fabian’s mouth tightening, but all he said was, “Whatever you say, dear Evelyn.”

She went upstairs to get a coat and Fabian and I were alone for a moment. “I do like a woman,” he said, a hard glint in his eye, “who knows her own mind. Poor Douglas.”

“Poor nothing,” I said.

He shrugged, touched his mustache, turned to look at the painting over the mantelpiece. “Where did she get that?” he asked.

“In Rome,” I said. “I bought it for her.”

“You did?” he said flatly, but with a hint of unflattering surprise. “Interesting. Do you remember the name of the gallery?”

“Bonelli’s. It’s on the via…”

“I know where Bonelli’s is. Old man with sliding teeth. If I happen to be in Rome I may look in…”

Evelyn came down from the bedroom with her coat over her arm, and Fabian was quick to help her on with it. Somehow, as was the case with any woman whom he considered attractive, his movements at moments like that were caressing, like a lover’s, not a headwaiter’s. I took it as a good sign.

The lobster turned out to be every bit as good as Evelyn had promised, and Fabian ordered a bottle of American white wine from Napa Valley that he said was almost as good as any white wine he had drunk in France. Then he ordered another bottle. By then, the atmosphere had relaxed considerably and he teased me gently about my Roman suits, praised my skiing to Evelyn and told her that she must allow me to teach her, mentioned Gstaad, St-Paul-de-Vence, Paris, all very casually, told two funny, unmalicious anecdotes about Giuliano Quadrocelli, listened seriously as we described the blowing up of the boat in the harbor, did not bring up the names of Lily or Eunice, stayed away from the topic of business, deferred at all times when Evelyn wanted to say something, and in general behaved like the most charming and considerate of hosts. I could see that for better or worse he had decided to win over Evelyn and I hoped he would succeed.

“Tell me, Miles,” Evelyn said as we were finishing our coffee, “in the war were you a colonel? I asked Douglas and he said he didn’t know.”

“Heavens no, dear girl,” he laughed. “I was the lowliest of lieutenants.”

“I was sure you were a colonel,” Evelyn said. “At least a colonel.”

“Why?”

“No particular reason,” Evelyn said carelessly. She put her hand on mine on the table. “Just a kind of air of commanding the troops.”

“It’s a trick I learned, dear Evelyn,” Fabian said, “to cover up my essential lack of self-confidence. Would you like a brandy?”

When he had paid the bill, he wouldn’t hear of our driving all the way to take him to his hotel in Southampton. “And tomorrow morning,” he said to me, “don’t bother to get up early. I have to be in New York by noon and the hotel will find a limousine for me.”

As the taxi drove up to the restaurant, now half-obscured by fog rolling in from the bay, he said, “What a lovely evening. I hope we will have many such. If I may. Gentle Heart …’I did not miss the echo … “If I may…” He leaned toward Evelyn. I would love to kiss this dear girl good night.”

“Of course,” she said, not waiting for my permission, and kissed him on the cheek.

We watched him get into the taxi and the red tail-lights faded wetly into the fog. “Whew!” Evelyn said, reaching for my hand.

That night and the next morning I was glad Fabian was in a hotel and not in Evelyn’s house.

He did not make it to the wedding, as he was in England that week. But he sent a superb Georgian silver coffeepot as a gift from London, hand-carried by a stewardess he knew. And when our son was born, he sent five gold napoleons from Zurich, where he happened to be at the time.