Travels With My Aunt

Chapter 6

I WAITED with excited curiosity to see Mr Visconti. Not many men can have been so loved or have been forgiven so much, and I had an image in my mind’s eye to fit the part, of an Italian tall and dark and lean, as aristocratic as his name. But the man who came through the door to meet us was short and fat and bald; when he held his hand out to me I saw that his little finger had been broken and this made his hand resemble a bird’s claw. He had soft brown eyes quite without expression. One could read into them whatever one liked. If my aunt read love, I felt sure that O’Toole read dishonesty. ‘So here you are at last, Henry,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘Your aunt has been anxious.’ He spoke English very well with practically no accent. O’Toole said, ‘You are Mr Visconti?’

‘My name is Izquierdo. To whom have I the pleasure …?’

‘My name’s O’Toole.’

‘In that case,’ Mr Visconti said with a smile which was rendered phoney by a large gap in his front teeth, ‘pleasure is not the word I ought to use.’ ‘I thought you were safe in jail.’

‘The police and I came to an understanding.’

O’Toole said, ‘That’s what I’ve come here for-an understanding.’ ‘An understanding is always possible,” Mr Visconti said, as though he were quoting from a well-known source-perhaps from Machiavelli, ‘if there are equal advantages on either side.’

‘I guess there are in this case.’

‘I think,’ Mr Visconti said to my aunt, ‘there are still two bottles of champagne left in the kitchen.’

‘Two bottles?’ my aunt asked.

‘There are four of us, my dear.’ He turned to me and said, ‘It is not the best champagne. It has travelled a long way and rather roughly by way of Panama.’

‘Then I suppose,’ O’Toole said, ‘your arrangements with Panama are now okay.’

‘Exactly,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘When the police arrested me at your suggestion they thought they were once again arresting a poor man. I was able to convince them that I am now again potentially a man of means.’ My aunt came in from the kitchen carrying the champagne. ‘And glasses,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘you have forgotten the glasses.’

I watched Aunt Augusta with fascination. I had never seen her taking orders from anyone before.

‘Sit down, sit down, my friends,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘You must forgive the rough nature of our chairs. We have passed through a period of some privation, but all our difficulties, I hope, are over. Soon we shall be able to entertain our friends in proper fashion. Mr O’Toole, I raise my glass to the United States. I have no ill feelings towards you or your great country.’ ‘That’s big of you,’ O’Toole said. ‘But tell me, who’s the man in the garden?’

‘In my position I have to take precautions.’

‘He didn’t stop us.’

‘Only against my enemies.’

‘Which do you prefer to be called, Izquierdo or Visconti?’ O’Toole asked. ‘By this time I have grown quite accustomed to both. Let us finish this bottle and open another. Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie-detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie-detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.’ ‘You’ve had experience of them?’ O’Toole asked. “I had a session with one before I left BA. The results, I suspect, were not very useful to the police-or to you. You received them, I imagine? I had prepared myself beforehand very carefully. They strapped two rubber belts around my arms and I thought at first they were taking my blood pressure. Perhaps they were doing that among other things. They warned me that however much I lied the machine would always tell the truth. You can imagine my reaction to that. Scepticism is inbred in a Catholic. First they asked me a number of innocent questions, such as what was my favourite food, and did I become breathless going upstairs? As I answered those innocent questions I thought very hard of what a joy it would one day be for me to see again my dear friend here and my heart beat and my pulses jumped, and they couldn’t understand what was making me so excited about walking upstairs or eating cannelloni. Then they allowed me to calm down and afterwards they shot the name Visconti at me. “Are you Visconti?” “You’re Visconti, the war criminal,” but that had no effect on me at all because I had trained my old daily woman to call me Visconti in the morning when she drew the curtains.

“Visconti, you war criminal, wake up.” It had become a homely phrase to me meaning, “Your coffee is ready.” After that they went back to the question about going upstairs and this time I was very calm, but when they asked me why I liked cannelloni, I thought of my darling and I got excited again, so that at the next question which was a serious one, the cardiogram-if that’s what it was called-became much calmer because I stopped thinking of my dear. In the end they were in quite a rage-both with the machine and with me. You notice how champagne makes me talk. I am in the mood to tell you everything.” ‘I’ve come here to propose an arrangement, Mr Visconti. I’d hoped to have you out of circulation for a while so that I could convince Miss Bertram in your absence.’

‘I would have agreed to nothing,’ my aunt said, ‘until I had talked to Mr Visconti.’

‘We could still make a pack of trouble for you here. Every time we put pressure on the police it would cost you money in bribes. Now suppose we persuaded Interpol to close the files on you and we told the police we were not interested any more, that you were free to come and go …’ ‘I wouldn’t entirely trust you,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘I would prefer to stop here. Besides I am making friends.’

‘Sure, stay, if you want to. The police wouldn’t be able to blackmail you any more.’

‘It’s an interesting proposal’ Mr Visconti said. ‘You obviously imagine I have something to offer you in return? Let me fill your glass again.’ ‘We are prepared to do a deal,’ O’Toole said.

‘I’m a business-man,’ Mr Visconti replied. ‘In my time I’ve had dealings with many governments. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Vatican.’ ‘And the Gestapo.’

‘They were not gentlemen,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘Force of circumstances alone impelled me.’ His way of speaking reminded me of Aunt Augusta’s. They must have grown together with the years. ‘You realize, of course, I’ve had other offers of a private nature.’

‘A man in your position can’t afford private offers. Unless you deal with us you’ll never be able to live in this house of yours. I wouldn’t bother about buying the furniture.’

‘The furniture,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘is no longer a problem. My Dakota did not return empty yesterday from Argentina. Miss Bertram had already arranged with Harrods at Buenos Aires to deliver the furniture to a friend’s estancia. So many chandeliers for so many cigarettes. The bed was an expensive item. How many cases of whisky did we pay, my dear? To my friend of course, not to Harrods. An honourable firm. It takes a lot of whisky or cigarettes in these days to furnish a few essential rooms, and I admit frankly that I could do with a little ready cash. A beefsteak is sometimes more necessary than a chandelier. Panama cannot deliver again for two weeks. I’m in the position of a sound business with good prospects, but short of petty cash.’

‘I’m offering you security.’ O’Toole said, ‘not money.’

‘I’m used to being insecure. It doesn’t worry me. In my situation cash alone has a tongue.’

I was wondering what kind of an overdraft I would have granted Mr Visconti on his say-so alone, when my aunt took my hand. ‘I think,’ she whispered to me, ‘that we should leave Mr Visconti alone with Mr O’Toole.’ Aloud she said to me, ‘Henry, come with me a moment. I’ve got something to show you.’ ‘Has Mr Visconti any Jewish blood?’ I asked when we were outside the room. ‘No,’ Aunt Augusta said, ‘Saracen perhaps. He always got on well with the Saudi Arabians. Do you like him, Henry?’ she asked with an appeal which touched me under the circumstances. She was not a woman who found it easy to make an appeal.

‘It’s early for me to judge,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t seem to me very trustworthy.’

‘If he were, would I have loved him, Henry?’

She led me through the kitchen-one chair, a drying rack, an ancient gas stove, tins of food stacked upon the floor-to the back of the house. The yard was full of wooden crates. My aunt said with pride, ‘You see our furniture. Enough for two bedrooms and a dining-room. A little garden furniture too for our celebration.’

‘And for the food and drink?’

‘That is what Mr Visconti is discussing now.’

‘Does he really expect the CIA to pay for your party? What happened to all the money you had in Paris, Aunt Augusta?’

‘It was very expensive settling with the police, and then I had to find a house worthy of Mr Visconti’s position.’

‘Has he got one?’

‘He has walked in his time with cardinals and Arabian princes,’ Aunt Augusta said. ‘You don’t imagine that a little country like Paraguay will hold him down for long.’

A light went on at the bottom of the garden and then was extinguished. ‘Who is it prowling there?’ I asked.

‘Mr Visconti doesn’t altogether trust his partner. He has been betrayed too often.’ I couldn’t help wondering how many he had himself betrayed: my aunt, his wife, those cardinals and princes, even the Gestapo. My aunt sat down on one of the smaller crates. She said, ‘I am so happy, Henry, that you are here and Mr Visconti is safely returned. Perhaps I am getting a little old, for I shall be quite content with a spell of family life. You and me and Mr Visconti working together …’

‘Smuggling cigarettes and whisky?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the bodyguard in the garden.’

‘I wouldn’t want my days to peter out, Henry, with no interest in them at all.’

Mr Visconti’s voice called from somewhere in the vast house. ‘My dear, my dear. Can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fetch me the picture, dear.’

My aunt rose. ‘The deal, I think, must have been concluded,’ she said. ‘Come, Henry.’ But I let her go without me. I walked away from the house towards the trees. The stars were so brilliant in the low sky that I must have been easily visible to anyone watching from the trees. A small warm breeze blew around me the scent of orange and jasmine. It was as though I had plunged my head into a box of cut flowers. As I entered the shade a light flashed on my face and went out again, but this time I was ready for it and I knew exactly where the man stood. I had kept a match ready and I struck it. I saw leaning against a lapacho a little old man with long moustaches; his mouth had fallen open with surprise and perplexity so that I could see the toothless gums before the match burnt down. ‘Buenos noches,’ I said, which was one of the few expressions I had picked up from my phrase-book, and he mumbled something in reply. I turned to go back and stumbled on the uneven ground and he flashed on his torch to aid me. I thought to myself that Mr Visconti could not as yet afford much in the way of a bodyguard. Perhaps with the second load from Panama he would be able to afford something better.

In the dining-room I found all three of them, gathered round the picture. I recognized it from the frame, for it had been propped in my cabin for four days. ‘I don’t understand,’ O’Toole said.

‘Nor do I,’ said Mr Visconti. ‘I expected a photograph of the Venus of Milo.’

‘You know that I can’t stand torsos, dear,’ Aunt Augusta said. ‘I told you about that murder on the chemin de fer, I found this photograph in Wordsworth’s room.’

O’Toole said, ‘I don’t understand what in hell all this is about. What murder on the chemin de fer?’

‘It’s too long a story to tell you now,’ Aunt Augusta said. ‘Besides Henry knows it, and he doesn’t care at all for my stories.’

‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘I was simply tired that night in Boulogne ‘

‘Look,’ O’Toole said, ‘I’m not interested in what happened in Boulogne. I made an offer for a picture which Mr Visconti here stole …’ ‘I did not steal it,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘The prince gave it me quite voluntarily to present to Field-Marshal Goering in recognition …’ ‘Oh sure, sure, we know all that. The prince didn’t give you a photo of a lot of African women …’

‘It should have been the Venus of Milo,’ Mr Visconti said, shaking his head in perplexity. ‘You had no need to change it, dear. It was a very fine photograph.’

‘It should have been a drawing of Leonardo da Vinci’s,’ O’Toole replied.

‘What did you do with the photograph?’ Mr Visconti asked.

‘I threw it away. I won’t have any torsos to remind me …’ ‘I’ll have you pulled in again in the morning/ O’Toole threatened, ‘whatever bribes you pay. The Ambassador himself…’ ‘Ten thousand dollars was the agreed price, but I’ll accept payment in the local currency if it’s more convenient.’

‘For a photograph of a lot of black women,’ O’Toole said.

‘If you really want the photograph I would throw it in with the other.’

‘What other?’

‘The prince’s picture.’

Mr Visconti turned the frame over and began to tear away the backing. My aunt said. ‘Would anyone like some whisky?’

‘Not after the champagne, dear.’

Mr Visconti removed a small drawing which had been hidden behind the photograph of Freetown. It could not have been more than eight inches by six, O’Toole looked at it with wonder. Mr Visconti said, ‘There you are. Is anything wrong?’

‘I guess I thought it would be a madonna.’

‘Leonardo was not primarily interested in madonnas. He was the chief engineer of the Pope’s army. Alexander VI. You know about Alexander?’ ‘I’m not a Roman Catholic,’ O’Toole said.

‘He was the Borgia Pope.’

‘A bad guy?’

‘In some respects,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘he resembled my patron, the late Marshal Goering. Now this, as you can see, is an ingenious device for attacking the walls of a city. A sort of dredge, very much the same as they use on building sites today, though motivated by human power. It grabs out the foundations of a wall and throws the stones up to this catapult which projects them into the city. In fact you bombard the city with its own walls. Ingenious, isn’t it?’

‘Ten thousand dollars for this … Would it work?’

‘I’m no engineer,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘I cannot judge it practically, but I challenge anyone today to make so beautiful a drawing of a dredge.’ ‘I guess you’re right,’ O’Toole said and added with reverence, ‘So this is the real McCoy. We’ve been looking for this and for you for nearly twenty years.’

‘And where does it go now?’

‘The prince died in prison, so I guess we hand it over to the Italian government.’ He gave a sigh. I don’t know whether it was of disillusion or satisfaction.

‘You may keep the frame.’ Mr Visconti said kindly.

I went with O’Toole down through the garden to the gate. There was no sign now of the old bodyguard. O’Toole said, ‘It goes against the grain to see the U.S. government pay ten thousand dollars for a stolen picture.’ ‘It would be difficult to prove,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it was a sort of present to Goering. I wonder why they shut the prince up.’

We stood together by his car. He said, ‘I got a letter today from Lucinda. The first in nine months. She writes about a boy-friend of hers. She says they are hitchhiking to Goa because Vientiane wasn’t right for him.’ ‘He’s a painter,’ I explained.

‘A painter?’ He put the Leonardo carefully on the back seat.

‘He paints pictures of Heinz soup tins.’

‘You are joking.’

‘Leonardo drew a dredge and you paid ten thousand dollars for it.’

‘I guess I’ll never understand art,’ O’Toole said. ‘Where’s Goa?’

‘On the coast of India.’

‘That girl’s one hell of an anxiety,’ he said, but if she hadn’t existed, I thought, he’d have been anxious just the same. Anxieties in his case would always settle on him like flies on an open wound.

‘Thanks for getting me out of the jail,’ I said.

‘Any friend of Lucinda’s …’

‘Give my love to Tooley when you write.’

‘I’m putting your friend Wordsworth on the next boat. Why don’t you go with him?’

‘My family …’

‘Visconti’s no relation of yours. He’s not your type, Henry.’

‘My aunt …’

‘An aunt’s not all that close. An aunt’s not a mother.’ He couldn’t get his starter to work. He said, ‘It’s time they gave me a newer car. Think about it, Henry.’

‘I will.’

I found Mr Visconti laughing when I returned, my aunt watching him with disapproval.

‘What’s up?’

‘I told him ten thousand dollars was too little for a Leonardo.’ ‘It didn’t belong to him,’ I said. ‘And he’s got security as well. The file’s closed.’

‘Mr Visconti,’ my aunt said, ‘has never cared about security.’

‘The boat goes back the day after tomorrow. O’Toole is putting Wordsworth

on board. He wants me to go with him.’

‘She said I ought to have asked double,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘for a Leonardo.’

‘So you should have.’

‘But it’s not a Leonardo at all. It’s only a copy,’ Mr Visconti said.

‘That’s why they shut the prince up.’ He was a little breathless with laughter. He said, ‘It was nearly a perfect copy. The prince was afraid of thieves and he kept the original in a bank. Unfortunately the bank was obliterated by the American air force. No one knew, except the prince, that the Leonardo was obliterated too.’

‘If it was so good a copy how could the Gestapo tell?’ I asked. ‘The prince was a very old man.’ Mr Visconti said with all the pride of his mere eighty years. ‘When I came to see him-on behalf of the Marshal-he pleaded for his picture. He told me it was only a copy and I wouldn’t believe him. Then he showed me. If you look through a magnifying glass at the cogwheel of the dredge you can see the forger’s initials in looking-glass writing. I kept the drawing in memory of the prince, because I thought it might prove useful one day.’

‘You told the Gestapo?’

‘I couldn’t trust them not to have it examined by an expert,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘He hadn’t long to live. He was very old.’

‘As you are now.’

‘He had nothing to live for,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘and I have your aunt.’ I looked at Aunt Augusta. The corner of her mouth twitched. ‘It was very wrong of you,’ was all she said, ‘very very wrong.’

Mr Visconti rose and picking up the photograph of Freetown he tore it in small pieces. ‘And now to our well-earned rest,’ he said. ‘I wanted to send that back to Wordsworth,’ my aunt protested, but Mr Visconti put his arm around her and they went up the marble staircase side by side, like any old couple who have continued to love each other through a long and difficult life.

“THEY DESCRIBED YOU as a viper,’ I said to Mr Visconti.”

‘They?’

‘Well, in fact, it was not the detectives: it was the Chief of Police in Rome.’

‘A Fascist,’ Mr Visconti said.

‘In 1945?’

‘Ah, a collaborator then.”

‘The war was over.’

‘A collaborator nonetheless. One collaborates always with the victorious side. One supports the losing.’ It sounded again like a quotation from Machiavelli.

We were drinking champagne together in the garden, for the house at the moment was impossible. Men were carrying furniture. Other men were up ladders. Electricians were repairing lights and hanging chandeliers. My aunt was very much in charge.

‘I preferred flight to a new form of collaboration,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘One can never tell who will win in the end. Collaboration is always a temporary measure. It’s not that I care much for security, but I like to survive. Now if the Questore had described me as a rat, I would have had no objection. Indeed, I have a great fellow feeling for rats, the future of the world lies with the rat. God, at least as I imagine him, created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed-that is the meaning of evolution. One species would survive, another would die out. I have never understood why Protestants objected so much to the ideas of Darwin. Perhaps if he had concentrated on the evolution of sheep and goats he would have appealed to the religious sense.’ ‘But rats …’ I objected.

‘Rats are highly intelligent creatures. If we want to find out anything new about the human body we experiment on rats. Rats indeed are ahead of us indisputably in one respect-they live underground. We only began to live underground during the last war. Rats have understood the danger of surface life for thousands of years. When the atom bomb falls the rats will survive. What a wonderful empty world it will be for them, though I hope they will be wise enough to stay below. I can imagine them evolving very quickly. I hope they don’t repeat our mistake and invent the wheel.’

‘It’s odd all the same how much we hate them,’ I said. I had drunk three glasses of champagne and I found that I could talk to Mr Visconti as freely as I had talked to Tooley. ‘We call a coward a rat, and yet it is we who are the cowards. We are afraid of them.’

‘The Questore may not have been afraid of me, but perhaps he had an uneasy sense that I would outlive him. It is an uncomfortable form of envy which is experienced only bv those in a really secure position. I don’t feel it about you, although you are much younger than I am, because we live here in an equally blessed state of insecurity. You go first? I go first? Mr O’Toole goes first? It all depends on who is the best rat. That is why in a modern war old men read the casualty lists with a certain smug satisfaction. They may survive longer than their grandchildren.’

‘I met a rat once in my garden,’ I said and allowed Mr Visconti to refill my glass. ‘He was standing motionless so as not to be seen in the flower-bed. His fur looked fluffy like a bird who has blown out its feathers against the cold. He wasn’t repulsive like a smooth rat. Without thinking I threw a stone at him. I missed him and I expected him to run, but instead he only limped away. One of his legs must have been broken. There was a hole in the hedge and he made for it very slowly. Once he stopped exhausted and peered over his shoulder at me. He looked rejected, and I was sorry for him. I couldn’t throw another stone. He limped on to the hole and went through it. There was a cat in the next garden and I knew he didn’t stand a chance. He had such dignity, going to his death. I felt ashamed of myself all that morning.’

‘It does you credit,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘Speaking as an honorary rat on behalf of other rats, I forgive the stone. Have another glass.’ ‘I’m not used to champagne in the morning.’

‘There is nothing more useful that we can do at the moment than put ourselves in a good humour. My wife is quite happy in the house preparing for her party.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Yes, I speak prematurely, but last night we decided to marry. Now that the sexual urge is behind us, marriage presents no danger of infidelity or boredom.’ ‘You lived a long time without marriage.’

‘Our life has been what the French call mouvementé. Now I can leave a great deal of the burden of work to you. My partner needs watching, but you can leave him to me. And I will look after relations with the police. The Chief of Police is coming tomorrow night. He has a charming daughter by the way. It’s a pity you are not a Catholic, he would make a valuable father-in-law, but perhaps we could remedy that.”

‘You talk as if I were settling here for life.’

‘I know that “for life” has a rather lugubrious sound, as in the term “imprisonment for life”, but here you know “for life” can so easily mean for a day, for a week, for a month. And you won’t die in a traffic accident.’ ‘You speak as though I were a young man looking for adventure. O’Toole wants me to take the boat tomorrow.’

‘But you are one of the family now,’ Mr Visconti replied, putting his hand like a bird’s claw on my knee and digging a little with his fingers to retain a grip. ‘I feel towards you very like a father.’ His smile, which he must have meant to be a tender one, was not of the kind which one associates with paternity: the missing teeth ruined it. He must have seen me looking at his mouth, for he explained, ‘I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It’s the only form of jewellery a man can wear that women fully appreciate. Dear things, they like to put their lips on gold. Unfortunately the Nazis were acquisitive that way, and although I tried to remain on friendly terms, I thought it safer to have the teeth removed. There was an officer of the Gestapo who had a drawer full of teeth. I noticed that he always looked me in the mouth, not the eyes.’

‘How did you explain their absence?’

‘I told them I had exchanged them for cigarettes. I cannot think what I would have done without those teeth when I had to run away. Before I reached Milan and Mario’s Jesuits I was down to my last tooth.’ Aunt Augusta joined us from the house. ‘I could do with a glass myself,’ she said. ‘I hope it’s not going to rain tomorrow. I’m keeping the dining-room empty for dancing in case. Your room is looking quite furnished, Henry. Everything is a little slow because there are misunderstandings. I keep on using Italian words, and they don’t understand. I find myself looking round for Wordsworth to explain. He had a way of explaining …’ ‘I thought we had agreed, dear, that his name was not to be spoken.’

‘I know, but it’s so absurd to inconvenience ourselves with jealousies at our age. Do you know, Henry, Mr Visconti was quite disturbed when I told him that I met Achille on the boat? Poor Achille. He couldn’t move for gout.’

‘I like the dead to stay dead,’ Mr Visconti said.

‘Unlike Pottifer,’ my aunt replied and laughed.

‘Who was Pottifer?’ I asked.

‘I was going to tell you at Boulogne, but you wouldn’t listen.’

‘Tell me now.’

‘There are too many things to see about.’

I could see that the only way to atone for my conduct in the restaurant of the Gare Maritime was to beg her to tell me. ‘Please, Aunt Augusta, I want to know …’ I felt like a child pretending interest in a story to delay bedtime. What was it that I was delaying? Perhaps the moment when I had finally to decide to catch the boat home, to find again my dahlias and Major Charge, to reply to Miss Keene’s letter, or to pass the border into my aunt’s world where I had lived till now as a tourist only. It seemed to me, watching the champagne from Panama, shooting up its bubbles like balls dancing on water at a fair, inconceivable that I could abandon, forever the region of Colonel Hakim and Curran and O’Toole . .

‘What are you smiling at?’ Aunt Augusta asked.

‘I was thinking of O’Toole flying off today to Washington with the fake Leonardo.’

‘Not today. There are no planes to the north. He will be at the party tomorrow night. I asked him before he left. When once he had got what he wanted he was quite a charming man. Good-looking in a sad way.’ ‘But perhaps today when he has time to examine the drawing …’ ‘Mr O’Toole is no art expert,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘The man who did that forgery was a genius. He was quite illiterate. A peasant on the prince’s estate, but with a wonderful hand and eye. The prince never knew what a treasure he had living there until the police descended-that was in the early days of Mussolini-and arrested the man. He was making counterfeit notes. He had rigged up a little printing works at the back of the estate forge. They were extraordinarily good, his forgeries, but he didn’t know his own value, he gave them away to his fellow labourers. The prince could never understand how it was his people had become so prosperous-there wasn’t a labourer without a radio set. In socialist circles the prince gained a high reputation as an enlightened employer -they even wanted him to stand as a deputy. Then all the peasants began buying refrigerators and even motor-cycles. And of course they went too far … somebody bought a Fiat. And the paper the forger used wasn’t up to the mark. When the man came out of prison the prince welcomed him back, and he was very careful to give him the correct materials for copying the Leonardo.’ ‘Extraordinary. And you say he was illiterate?’

‘It really helped him with the forging. He had no preconceived idea for example of how a letter was written. A letter was simply an abstract shape. It’s easier to copy something with no meaning.’

The heat of the morning deepened, and the smell of flowers. We had nearly finished the bottle of champagne. The lotos land, I thought.

‘To hear each other’s whispered speech, Eating the lotos day by day.’

What were the lines about ‘the long-leaved flowers weep?’ It was the trees which wept here, golden tears. I heard an orange strike the ground. It rolled a few inches and lay among a dozen others.

‘What are you thinking, dear?’

‘Tennyson has always been my favourite poet. I used to believe there was something Tennysonian in Southwood. The old church perhaps, the rhododendrons, Miss Keene sewing. I always liked his lines:

“Then take the broidery frame, and add

A crimson to the quaint Macaw”

although of course it wasn’t embroidery she did.’

‘Are you missing Southwood even here?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘there was another Tennyson and I find him here more than there.

“Death is the end of life; ah, why should life all labour be?’”

‘Mr Pottifer didn’t believe that-that death was the end of life.’

‘A lot of people don’t.’

‘Yes, but he took positive action.’

I realized that Aunt Augusta passionately wanted to tell me about Pottifer.

I caught Mr Visconti’s eye and he gave a very slight shrug.

‘Who was Pottifer?’ I asked my aunt.

‘He was an income tax consultant,’ Aunt Augusta said and fell silent.

‘Is that all?’

‘He was a very proud man.’

I could tell that my remark in Boulogne still rankled and that I would have to drag the story out of her piecemeal.

‘Yes?’

‘He had formerly been employed by the inland revenue-a tax inspector.’ The sun shone down on the orange trees, the lemon and the grapefruit. Under the rosy lapachos grew the blue and white flowers on the same bush of jasmine. Mr Visconti poured what was left of the champagne into our three glasses. The transparent moon was dropping over the horizon. Somerset House, income tax … They were as distant as the Mare Crisium or the Mare Humorum on the pale globe in the sky.

‘Please tell me about him, Aunt Augusta.’ I said reluctantly. ‘He had the idea,’ my aunt said, ‘of prolonging his life after death by means of the answering service of the general post office. Not very convenient for his clients, of whom I was one. It was when I was separated for the second time from Mr Visconti by war. In Italy I had never been accustomed to pay taxes. They came as a rude shock to me. Especially as the little income I had was regarded as unearned. When I think of those endless tours, Rome, Milan, Florence, Venice before Jo died, and I joined forces with Mr Visconti… .’ ‘A happy day for me, dear,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘but you were telling Henry about the man Pottifer.’

‘I have to give a little background or Henry wouldn’t understand about the company.’

‘What company?’ I asked.

‘It was invented by Mr Pottifer to take care of my case and that of a few other ladies in my position. It was called Meerkat Products Ltd. We were appointed directors and our incomes (unearned indeed!) were put down as directors’ fees. The fees appeared on the books and helped the company to show what Mr Pottifer always called a healthy little loss. In those days, the bigger the loss, the more valuable the company when the time came to sell it. I never understood why.’

‘Your aunt is not a business-woman,’ Mr Visconti said with tenderness. ‘I trusted Mr Pottifer and I was right to trust him. During his years as an inspector he had developed quite a hatred for the office he served. He would do anything to help anyone about tax. He was very proud of his ability to circumvent a new law. He always went into purdah for three weeks after a new Finance Act.’

“What was Meerkat and what did it produce?’

‘It produced nothing or we might have shown a profit. When Mr Pottifer died I did look up Meerkat in the dictionary. It said a small South African mammal like an ichneumon. As I didn’t know what an ichneumon was I looked that up too. Apparently it was something which destroyed crocodile’s eggs-I would have thought an unproductive occupation. I think the tax inspectors probably thought that it was a province in India.’

Two men came down into the garden carrying a black metal frame.

‘What’s that, dear?’

‘The barbecue.’

‘It looks enormous.’

‘It has to be if it’s to roast an ox whole.’

‘I said, ‘You haven’t told me about the answering service.’ ‘It was most awkward,’ my aunt said, ‘income tax demands came in-exorbitant as usual-and every time I tried to telephone to Mr Pottifer I heard the answering service, “Mr Pottifer is at a meeting of the Commissioners. He will call you back.” This went on for nearly a fortnight, and then it occurred to me to ring him up at one in the morning. The answer was just the same: “Mr Pottifer is at a meeting of the Commissioners …” Then I knew something was wrong. It all came out in the end. He had been dead for three weeks, but in his will he had insisted that his brother should keep on the telephone and make an arrangement with the answering service.”

‘But why?’

‘I think the reason lay partly in his idea of immortality, but I think too it belonged to his war against the Inland Revenue. He was a great believer in delaying tactics. “Never answer all their questions,” he would say. “Make them write again. And be ambiguous. You can always decide what you mean later according to circumstances. The bigger the file the bigger the work. Personnel frequently change. A newcomer has to start looking at the file from the beginning. Office space is limited. In the end it’s easier for them to give in.” Sometimes, if the inspector was pressing very hard, he told me that it was time to fling in a reference to a non-existing letter. He would write sharply, “You seem to have paid no attention to my letter of April 6, 1963.” A whole month might pass before the inspector admitted he could find no trace of it. Mr Pottifer would send in a carbon copy of the letter containing a reference which again the inspector would be unable to trace. If he was a newcomer to the district, of course he blamed his predecessor; otherwise, after a few years of Mr Pottifer, he was quite liable to have a nervous breakdown. I think when Mr Pottifer planned to carry on after death (of course there was no notice in the papers and the funeral was very quiet) he had these delaying tactics in mind. He didn’t think of the inconvenience to his clients, only of the inconvenience to the inspector.’

Aunt Augusta gave a deep sigh, as ambiguous as one of Pottifer’s letters. I couldn’t tell whether it was of melancholy for Pottifer’s death or of satisfaction in having at last told the story she had begun in the Gare Maritime at Boulogne.

‘In this blessed land of Paraguay,’ Mr Visconti spoke as though he were adding a moral to the story, ‘there is no income tax and no evasions are necessary.’

‘Mr Pottifer would not have been happy here,’ Aunt Augusta said. That night, as I was preparing to undress, she came to my room. She sat down on the bed. ‘It’s quite comfortable here now, isn’t it?’ she asked me. ‘Very comfortable.’

She noticed at once the photograph of herself which I had taken from Rob Roy and stuck into a corner of a looking-glass. A bedroom without a photograph always seems to indicate a heartless occupant, for one needs the presence of others when one falls asleep, standing around as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John used to in childhood.

‘Where did that come from?’ Aunt Augusta asked.

‘I found it in a book.’

‘Your father took it.’

‘I thought so.’

‘It was a very happy day,’ she said. ‘There weren’t many-happy days at that time. There were so many arguments about your future.’ ‘Mine?’

‘And you weren’t even born. Now again I wish that I could know your future.

Are you going to stay with us? You are so evasive.’

‘It’s too late for the boat now.’

‘There’s sure to be an empty cabin.’

‘I don’t think I want three days with poor Wordsworth.’

‘There are planes …’

‘Exactly,’ I said, ‘so you see I needn’t make up my mind. I can go next week, or the week after. We can wait and see how things go.’ ‘I have always thought that one day we might be together.’

‘Always, Aunt Augusta? We’ve known each other for less than a year.’

‘Why do you suppose I came to the funeral?’

‘It was your sister’s funeral.’

‘Yes, of course, I had forgotten that.’

‘There’s plenty of time to make plans,’ I said. ‘You may not even want to settle here yourself. After all you are a great traveller, Aunt Augusta.’ ‘This is my journey’s end,’ Aunt Augusta said. ‘Perhaps travel for me was always a substitute. I never wanted to travel as long as Mr Visconti was there. What is there in Southwood which draws you back?’

The question had been in my mind for several days and now I did my best to answer it. I spoke of my dahlias, I even talked of Major Charge and his goldfish. The rain began to fall, rustling through the trees in the garden; a grapefruit tumbled heavily to earth. I spoke of the last evening with Miss Keene and her sad undecided letter from Koffiefontein. Even the admiral stalked through my memories, flushed with Chianti and wearing a scarlet paper cap. Packages of Omo were left on the doorstep. I felt a sense of relief as a patient must feel under pentothal, and I let my random thoughts dictate my words. I spoke of Chicken and of Peter and Nancy in the Abbey Restaurant in Latimer Road, of the bells of St John’s Church and the tablet to Councillor Trumbull, the patron of the grim orphanage. I sat on the bed beside my aunt and she put her arm round me while I went over the uneventful story of my life. ‘I’ve been very happy,’ I concluded as though it needed an excuse.

‘Yes, dear, yes, I know,’ she said.

I told her how very kind to me Sir Alfred Keene had been, and I told her of the bank and of how Sir Alfred threatened to remove his account if I did not remain as manager.

‘My darling boy,’ she said, ‘all that is over now,’ and she stroked my forehead with her old hand as though I were a schoolboy who had run away from school and she was promising me that I would never have to return, that all my difficulties were over, that I could stay at home.

I was sunk deep in my middle age. All the same I laid my head against her breast. ‘I have been happy,’ I said, ‘but I have been so bored for so long.’

THE PARTY WAS LARGER than I had conceived possible after seeing my aunt alone in the empty unfurnished house, and I could only explain it by the fact that not one real friend was present among all the hundred guests, unless one could call O’Toole a friend. As more and more guests assembled I wondered from what highways and hedges Mr Visconti had drummed them up. The street was lined with cars, among them two armoured ones, for the Chief of Police had arrived as promised bringing with him a very fat and ugly wife and a beautiful daughter called Camilla. Even the young officer who had arrested me was there, and he gave me a hearty slap on the back to show that there was no ill feeling on his part. (I had still a piece of plaster on my ear where he had struck me on the earlier occasion.) I think Mr Visconti must have visited, every hotel bar in town, and the most passing acquaintances had been invited to bring their friends. The party was to be his apotheosis. After it no one would ever care to remember the former Mr Visconti who had lain sick and impoverished in a mean hotel by the yellow Victorian station.

The great gates had been cleaned of rust and flung open; the chandeliers sparkled in the sala, lights were turned on in even the empty rooms, while coloured globes had been strung from tree to tree and over the boards of the dance-floor laid on the grass. On the terrace two musicians tuned a guitar and a harp. O’Toole was there, the Czech who had failed to sell two million plastic straws had brought his wife from the Hotel Guarani, and suddenly I saw moving inconspicuously through the crowd and disappearing again as though into some warren in the garden the export-import merchant who had shared our table on the boat, grey and thin, twitching his rabbit nose. On the lawn the ox steamed and crackled on its iron frame, and the smell of roasting meat chased away the perfume of orange and jasmine.

My memories of the party are very confused, perhaps because I helped myself rather liberally to champagne before dinner. There were more women than men, as so often happens in Paraguay, where the male population has been reduced by two terrible wars, and I found myself on more than one occasion dancing or speaking with the beautiful Camilla. The musicians played mainly polkas and gallops, the steps of which were unknown to me, and I was astonished to see how my aunt and Mr Visconti picked them up on the spot by a kind of second nature. Whenever I looked among the dancers, on the lawn or in the sola, they were there. Camilla who could speak very little English tried in vain to teach me: it was too much a matter of duty on her part for me to respond. I said, ‘I am glad I am not in prison tonight.’

‘How?’

‘That young man over there put me in a cell.’

‘How?’

‘Do you see this plaster? That’s where he hit me.’ I was trying to make light conversation, but when there was a pause in the music she hastened away. O’Toole was suddenly at my side. He said, ‘It’s a great party. Great. I wish Lucinda could have been here. She’d have found it great too. There’s the Dutch Ambassador talking to your aunt. I saw your British Ambassador just now. And the Nicaraguan. I wonder how Mr Visconti corralled the diplomatic corps. I guess it’s his name-if it is his real name. There’s not much to do in Asuncion, and I suppose if you get an invitation from a guy called Visconti …’ ‘Have you seen Wordsworth?’ I asked. ‘I half-expected him to turn up as well.’

‘He’ll be on the boat by now. They sail at six, as soon as it’s light. I guess he wouldn’t be very welcome here as things are.’ ‘No.’

The guests were crowding to the steps of the terrace, clapping and crying ‘Brava.’ I saw Camilla up there dancing with a bottle balanced on her head. Mr Visconti pulled at my arm and said, ‘Henry, I want you to meet our representative in Formosa.’ I turned and held out my hand to the man with the grey rabbit face.

‘We were on the boat together coming from Buenos Aires,’ I reminded him, but of course he spoke no English.

‘He handles our river-borne traffic,’ Mr Visconti said, as though he were talking about some great legal enterprise. ‘You will be seeing a lot of each other. Now come and meet the Chief of Police.’

The Chief of Police spoke English with an American accent. He told me he had studied in Chicago. I said, ‘You have a beautiful daughter.’ He made a bow and said, ‘She has a beautiful mother.’ ‘She tried to teach me to dance, but I have no ear for music and your dances are new to me.’

‘The polka and the gallop. They are our national dances.’ ‘The names sound very Victorian,’ I said. I had meant it as a compliment, but he moved abruptly away.

The charcoal under the ox was turning black, and there was little left of the ox but a skeleton. It had been a good dinner. We had sat on benches in the garden before trestle tables and carried our plates to the barbecue. I had noticed how a stout man who sat beside me refilled his plate four times with huge steaks. ‘You have a good appetite,’ I said.

He ate like a good trencherman in a Victorian illustration, with the elbows stuck out and the head well down and a napkin tucked in his collar. He said, ‘This is nothing. At home I eat eight kilos of beef a day. A man needs strength.’

‘What do you do?’ I asked.

‘I am the chief customs officer,’ he said. He pointed with his fork down the table to a slim pale girl who looked scarcely eighteen. ‘My daughter,’ he said. ‘I tell her to eat more meat, but she is obstinate like her mother.’ ‘Which is her mother?’

‘She died. In the Civil War. She had no resistance. She did not eat meat.’ Now in the small hours I found him again beside me. He put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me as if we were old friends. He said, ‘Here is Maria. My daughter. She speaks English good. You must dance with her. Tell her she must eat more meat.’

We walked away together. I said, ‘Your father says he eats eight kilos of meat a day.’

‘Yes. That is true,’ she said.

‘I don’t know your dances, I’m afraid.’

‘It does not matter. I have danced enough,’

We walked towards the trees and I found two chairs. A photographer stopped beside us and held up his flash. Her face was startingly white and her eyes looked frightened in the glare. Then everything faded out and I could hardly see her.

‘How old are you?’ I asked.

‘Fourteen,’ she said.

‘Your father thinks you should eat more meat.’

‘I do not care for meat,’ she said.

‘What do you like?’

‘Poetry. English poetry. I like English poetry very much.’ She recited very seriously, “Heart of oak are our ships, Heart of oak are our men.” She added, ‘And Lord Ullin’s Daughter,’ She said, ‘I cry often when I read Lord Ullin’s Daughter’ “And Tennyson?’

‘Yes, I know Lord Tennyson too.’ She was gaining confidence, finding an interest we shared. ‘He is sad also. I like very much sad things.’ The guests crowded the floor as the harpist and the guitarist played another polka: we could see beyond the terrace through the windows of the sola the ebb and flow of the dancers. I quoted Maud in my turn to the customs officer’s daughter: ‘“The brief night goes in babble and revel and wine”.’ ‘I do not know that poem. Is it sad?’

“It’s a very long poem, and it ends very sadly.’ I tried to remember some of the sad lines, but the only one that came to my mind was: ‘I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood” which had little meaning out of context. I said, ‘If you like I will lend it to you. I have the collected poems of Tennyson here with me.’

O’Toole came towards us and I saw a chance of escaping, for I was feeling very tired and my ear hurt. I said, ‘This is Maria. She is studying English literature like your daughter.’ He was a sad and serious man. They would get on well together. It was nearly two in the morning. I wanted to find some unobtrusive corner where I could sleep awhile, but halfway across the lawn I found the Czech in conversation with Mr Visconti. Mr Visconti said, ‘Henry, we have an offer.’

‘An offer?’

‘This gentleman has two million plastic straws which he would let us have at half the cost price.’

‘That’s nearly the whole population of Paraguay,’ I said, “I am not thinking of Paraguay.’

The Czech said with a smile, ‘If you could persuade them to drink mate through a plastic straw …’ He wasn’t taking the business discussion very seriously, but I could see that Mr Visconti’s imagination had taken wing-I was reminded of Aunt Augusta when she began to embroider one of her anecdotes. It was probably the sound of that very round de luxe number-two million-that had excited Mr Visconti.

He said, ‘I was thinking of Panama. If our agent there could get them into the Canal Zone. Think of all those American sailors and tourists …’ ‘Do American sailors take soft drinks?’ the Czech asked. ‘Have you never heard,’ Mr Visconti said, ‘that beer is much more intoxicating drunk through a straw?’

‘Surely that is only a legend.’

‘There speaks a Protestant,’ Mr Visconti said. ‘Any Catholic knows that a legend which is believed has the same value and effect as the truth. Look at the cult of the saints.’

‘But the Americans may be Protestants.’

‘Then we produce medical evidence. That is the modern form of the legend. The toxic effect of imbibing alcohol through a straw. There is a Doctor Rodriguez here who would help me. The statistics of cancer of the liver. Suppose we could persuade the Panama government to prohibit the sale of straws with alcoholic drink. The straws would be sold illicitly from under the counter. The demand would be tremendous. Remote danger is a great attraction. From the profits I would found the Visconti Research Institute …’ ‘But these are plastic straws.’

‘We can call them cured straws; there will be articles showing that the cure is quite useless like filters on cigarettes.’

I left the two of them to their discussion. As I skirted the dance-floor I saw my aunt dancing the gallop with the Chief of Police: nothing seemed to tire her. The Chief’s daughter Camilla was in the arms of the customs officer, but the dancers had thinned out and a car with a CD plate was driving away. I found a chair in the yard behind the kitchen where a few crates of furniture still remained unopened, and almost immediately I fell asleep. I dreamt that the rabbit-nosed man was feeling my pulse and telling Mr Visconti that I was dead of the fluke-whatever that might mean. I tried to speak out to prove that I was alive, but Mr Visconti commanded some shadowy figures in the background, in a jumbled phrase from Maud, to bury me deeper, only a little deeper. I tried to cry out to my aunt who stood there pregnant in a bathing dress, holding Mr Visconti’s hand, and I woke gasping for breath and for words and heard the sound of the harp and the guitar playing on.

I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly four. Sunrise was not far off, the lights had been turned out in the garden, and the flowers seemed to breathe their scent more deeply in the small chill of the dawn. I felt oddly elated to be alive, and I knew in a moment of decision that I would never see Major Charge again, nor the dahlias, the empty urn, the packet of Omo on the doorstep or a letter from Miss Keene. I walked down towards the little wood of fruit trees nursing my decision close to my heart-I think even then I knew there would be a price to pay for it. The dancers who remained must all be in the sala now, for the lawn was empty, and there were no cars left outside the gates so far as I could see, though I heard the sound of one receding down the road towards the city. Again lines from Maud came to mind in the early sweet-scented morning: “Low on the sand and loud on the stone the last wheel echoes away.” It was as though I were safely back in the Victorian world where I had been taught by my father’s books to feel more at home than in our modern day. The wood sloped down towards the road and up again to the back gate, and as I entered the little hollow I trod on something hard. I stooped down and picked the object up. It was Wordsworth’s knife. The tool for taking stones out of a horse’s hoof was open-perhaps he had meant to open the blade and in his hurry he had made an error. I struck a match and before the flame went out I saw the body on the ground and the black face starred with white orange petals, which had been blown from the trees in the small breeze of early morning.

I knelt down and felt for the pulse in the heart. There was no life in the black body and my hand was wet from the wound I couldn’t see. ‘Poor Wordsworth,’ I said aloud with some idea of showing to his murderer if he were anywhere nearby that Wordsworth had a friend. I thought how his bizarre love for an old woman had taken him from the doors of the Grenada cinema, where he used to stand so proudly in his uniform, to die on the wet grass near the Paraguay river, but I knew that if this was the price he had to pay, he would have paid it gladly. He was a romantic, and in the only form of poetry he knew, the poetry which he had learnt at St George’s Cathedral, Freetown, he would have found the right words to express his love and his death. I could imagine him at the last, refusing to admit that she had dismissed him forever, reciting a hymn to keep his courage up as he walked towards the house through the hollow in the little wood: “If I ask Her to receive me, Will she say me nay? Not till earth and not till heav’n Pass away.”

The sentiment had always been sincere even if the changes in the words were unliturgical.

There was no sound except my own breathing. I closed the knife and put it in my pocket. Had he drawn it when he first entered the grounds with the intention of attacking Visconti? I preferred to think otherwise-that he had come with the simple purpose of appealing to his love once more before abandoning hope and that when he heard someone move among the trees he had drawn his knife hurriedly in self-defence, pointing at his unseen enemy the useless tool for horses’ hooves.

I went slowly back towards the house to break the news as gently as I might to Aunt Augusta. The musicians were still playing on the terrace, they were tired out and almost falling asleep over their instruments, but when I entered the sola there remained only one couple-my aunt and Mr Visconti, I was reminded of the house behind the Messaggero where they had met after a long separation and danced together between the sofas while the prostitutes watched with amazement. They were dancing a slow waltz now and they never saw me enter, two old people bound in the deep incurable egotism of passion. They had turned off the lights, and in the big room illumined only from the terrace there rested pools of darkness between the windows. As they moved I lost their faces and found them again. At one moment the shadows gave my aunt a deceptive air of youth: she looked like the young woman in my father’s photograph pregnant with happiness, and at another I recognized the old woman who had faced Miss Paterson with such merciless cruelty and jealousy.

I called out to her as she went by, ‘Aunt Augusta,’ but she didn’t answer to the name; there was no sign that she even heard me. They danced, on in their tireless passion into the shadows.

I took a few steps further into the room as they returned towards me, calling to her a second time, ‘Mother, Wordsworth’s dead.’ She only looked over her partner’s shoulder and said, ‘Yes, dear, all in good time, but can’t you see that now I am dancing with Mr Visconti?’

A flash-bulb broke the shadows up. I have the photograph still-all three of us are petrified by the lightning flash into a family group: you can see the great gap in Visconti’s teeth as he smiles towards me like an accomplice. I have my hand thrown out in a frozen appeal, and my mother is regarding me with an expression of tenderness and reproof. I have cut from the print another face which I hadn’t realized was in the room with us, the face of a little old man with long moustaches. He had been first with the news, and Mr Visconti sacked him later at my insistence (my mother took no part in the dispute which she said was a matter to be settled between men), so Wordsworth did not go entirely unavenged.

Not that I have time to think of the poor fellow very much. Mr Visconti has not yet made a fortune, and our import-export business takes more and more of my time. We have had our ups and downs, and the photographs of what we call the great party and of our distinguished guests have proved useful more than once. We own a complete Dakota now, for our partner was accidentally shot dead by a policeman because he couldn’t make himself understood in Guarani, and most of my spare time is spent in learning that language. Next year, when she is sixteen, I am to marry the daughter of the Chief of Customs, a union which has the approval of Mr Visconti and her parents. There is, of course, a considerable difference in our ages, but she is a gentle and obedient child, and often in the warm scented evenings we read Browning together.

“God’s in his heaven—

All’s right with the world!’”