“I thought something like that must have happened.”
His English was perfect, only the precise Swedish vowel sounds betraying his origins, and a certain formality in the manner in which he expressed himself.
“When I got your letter I was so frightened … that it would be too late.”
“No,” said Otto. “It is not too late.”
Something in his voice made me look at him. His profile was knife sharp against the yellow glow of passing street lights, his expression unsmiling and grave.
I said, “Is she dying?”
“Yes,” said Otto. “Yes, she is dying.”
“What is wrong with her?”
“Cancer of the blood. You call it leukaemia.”
“How long has she been ill?”
“About a year. But it was only just before Christmas time that she became so ill. The doctor thought that we should try blood transfusions, and I took her to the hospital for this. But it was no good, because as soon as I got her home again, she started this very bad nose bleed, and so the ambulance had to come and take her back to hospital again. She was there over Christmas and only then allowed home again. It was after that I wrote to you.”
“I wish I’d got the letter in time. Does she know I’m coming?”
“No, I didn’t tell her. You well know how she loves surprises, and equally how she hates to be disappointed. I thought there was a chance that something would go wrong and you wouldn’t be on the plane.” He smiled frostily, “But of course you were.”
We stopped at a cross-roads to wait for a country cart to pass in front of us, the feet of the mule making a pleasant sound on the dusty road, and a lantern swinging from the back of the cart. Otto took advantage of the pause to take a cheroot from the breast pocket of his jacket and light it from the lighter on the dashboard. The cart passed, we moved on.
“How long is it since you have seen your mother?”
“Two years.”
“You must expect a great change. I am afraid you will be shocked, but you must try not to let her see. She is still very vain.”
“You know her so well.”
“But of course.”
I longed to ask him if he loved her. The question was on the tip of my tongue, but I realized that at this stage of our acquaintance it would be nothing but impertinence to ask such an intimate and personal thing. Besides, what difference did it make? He had met her and wanted to be with her, had given her a home, and now, when she was so ill, was cherishing her in his own apparently unemotional manner. If that wasn’t love, then what was?
After a little, we began to talk of other things. I asked him how long he had lived on the island, and he said five years. He had come first in a yacht and had liked the place so well that he had returned the next year to buy his house and settle here.
“You’re a writer…”
“Yes, but I am also a Professor of History.”
“Do you write books on history?”
“I have done so. At the moment I am working on a thesis concerned with the Moorish occupation of these islands and southern Spain.”
I was impressed. As far as I could remember, none of my mother’s previous lovers had been even remotely intellectual.
“How far away is your house?”
“About five miles now. The village of Santa Catarina was quite unspoiled when I first came here. Now, however, large hotel developments are planned and I fear it will become spoiled like the rest of the island. No, that is wrong. Like some parts of the island. It is still possible to be entirely remote if you know where to go and have a car or perhaps a motor boat.”
It was warm in the car and I rolled down the window. The soft night air blew in on my face and I saw that we were in country now, passing through groves of olives, with every now and then the glimmering light of a farmhouse window shining beyond the bulbous, spiked shapes of prickly pear.
I said, “I’m glad she was here. I mean, if she has to be ill and die, I’m glad it’s somewhere like this, in the south, with the sun warm and the smell of pines.”
“Yes,” said Otto. And then, precisely as ever, “I think that she has been very happy.”
We drove on in silence, the road empty, telegraph poles rushing to meet the headlights of the car. I saw that now we were running parallel to the sea, which spread to an invisible, dark horizon and was dotted here and there with the lights of fishing boats. Presently there appeared ahead of us the neon-lighted shape of a village. We passed a sign reading “Santa Catarina” and then were driving down the main street; the air was filled with the smell of onions and oil and grilling meat. Flamenco music flung itself at us from open doorways, and dark faces, filled with absent curiosity, turned to watch us pass. In a moment we had left the village behind us, and had plunged forward into the darkness which lay beyond, only to slow down almost immediately to negotiate a steep corner which led up a narrow lane between orchards of almond trees. The headlights bored into the darkness, and ahead I saw the villa, white and square, pierced by small, secretive windows and with a lighted lantern swinging over the great, nailed front door.
Otto braked the car and switched off the engine. We got out, Otto taking my suitcase from the back seat and leading the way across the gravel. He opened the door and stood aside and I walked in ahead of him.
We were in a hallway, lit by a wrought-iron chandelier and furnished with a long couch covered in a bright blanket. A tall blue and white jar stood by the door containing a selection of ivory-handled walking sticks and sun umbrellas. As Otto closed the front door, another opened ahead of us and a small, dark-haired woman appeared, wearing a pink overall and flat, worn slippers.
“Señor.”
“Maria.”
She smiled, showing a number of gold teeth. He spoke to her in Spanish, asking a question to which she replied and then, turning, introduced me to her.
“This is Maria, who takes care of us. I have told her who you are…”
I held out my hand and Maria took it: we made friends by smiling and nodding. Then she turned back to Otto and spoke some more. Presently he handed her my suitcase, and she withdrew.
Otto said, “Your mother has been asleep but she is awake now. Let me take your coat.”
I unbuttoned it, and he helped me off with it and laid it across the end of the couch. Then he went across the floor towards yet another door, motioning me to follow. I did, and was suddenly nervous, afraid of what I was going to find.
It was the salon of the house into which he led me. A long low-ceilinged room, white-washed like the rest of the house, and furnished with a pleasing mixture of modern Scandinavian and antique Spanish. The tile floor was scattered with rugs, there were a great many books and pictures, and in the centre of the room a round table was laid out, seductively, with neatly ordered magazines and newspapers.
A wood fire burned in a great stone fireplace, and in front of this was a bed, with a low table alongside, holding a glass of water and a jug, a few pink geraniums in a mug, some books and a lighted lamp.
This lamp and the flicker of flames provided the only light in the room, but from the door I could see the narrow shape which humped the pink blankets and the attenuated hand and arm which was extended as Otto came forward to stand on the hearth rug.
“Darling,” she said.
“Lisa.” He took the hand and kissed it.
“You haven’t been long after all.”
“Maria says you have slept. Do you feel ready for a visitor?”
“A visitor?” Her voice was a thread. “Who?”
Otto glanced up at me, and I moved forward to stand beside him. I said, “It’s me. Rebecca.”
“Rebecca. Darling child. Oh, how blissfully jokey.” She held out both arms to me, and I knelt down beside the bed to kiss her; her body gave me no resistance or support at all, so thin was she, and when I touched her cheek it felt papery beneath my lips. It was like kissing a leaf that has long since been wrenched by the wind from its
parent tree.
“But what are you doing here?” She looked over my shoulder at Otto, and then back at me again. She put on the pretence of a frown. “You didn’t tell her to come?”
“I thought you would like to see her,” said Otto. “I thought it would cheer you up.”
“But darling, why didn’t you tell me?”
I smiled. “We wanted it to be a surprise.”
“But I wish I’d known, then I could have looked forward to seeing you. That’s what we always used to think, before Christmas. Half the fun was anticipation.” She let me go and I sat back on my heels. “Are you going to stay?”
“For a day or so.”
“Oh, how utterly perfect. We can have the most gorgeous gossips. Otto, does Maria know she’s staying?”
“Of course.”
“And what about dinner tonight?”
“It’s all arranged … we’ll have it together, in here, just the three of us.”
“Well, let’s have something now. A little drinkey. Is there any champagne?”
Otto smiled. “I think I can find a bottle. In fact, I think I remembered to put one on ice for just such an occasion.”
“Oh, you clever man.”
“Shall I get it now?”
“Please, darling.”
She slid her hand in mine and it was like holding chicken bones. “And we’ll drink to being together.”
He went away to fetch the champagne and we were alone. I found a little stool and pulled it up so that I could sit close to her. We looked at each other, and she could not stop smiling. The dazzling smile and the bright dark eyes were still the same, so was the dark hair that spread like a stain over the snowy pillowcase. Otherwise her appearance was horrifying. I had never known anyone could be so thin and still be alive. And to make it more unreal, she was not pale and colourless but quite brown, as though she still spent most of the day lying in the sun. But she was excited. It seemed she could not stop talking.
“So sweet of the darling man to know how much I would love to see you. The only thing is, I’m so boring just now, I don’t feel like doing anything, he should have waited until I’m better and then we could have had some fun together, and gone swimming and out in the boat and had picnics and things.”
I said, “I can come again.”
“Yes, of course you can.” She touched my face with her hand as though needing this contact to reassure her that I was really there. “You’re looking gorgeous, do you know that? You’ve got your father’s colouring, with those big grey eyes, and that corn-coloured hair. Is it corn, or is it gold? And I love the way you’re doing it.” Her hand travelled to the single plait which fell forward, like a rope over my right shoulder. “It makes you look like something out of a fairy story; you know, those old-fashioned books with the magical pictures. You’re very pretty.”
I shook my head. “No. I’m not.”
“Well, you look it, and that’s the next best thing. Darling, what are you doing with yourself? It’s such ages since I wrote or heard from you. Whose fault was that. Mine, I suppose, I’m hopeless at writing letters.”
I told her about the book shop and the new flat. She was amused by this. “What a funny person you are, building a little nest for yourself without anybody to share it with. Haven’t you met anybody yet you want to marry?”
“No. Nor anyone who wants to marry me.”
She looked malicious. “What about the man you work for?”
“He’s married, he’s got a charming wife and a brood of children.”
She giggled. “That never bothered me. Oh, darling, what a dreadful mother I was to you, trailing you round in that reprehensible fashion. It’s a wonder you haven’t collected the most ghastly selection of neuroses or hang-ups or whatever they call them these days! But you don’t look as though you have, so perhaps it was all right after all.”
“Of course it was all right. I just grew up with my eyes open and that was no bad thing.” I added, “I like Otto.”
“Isn’t he divine? So correct and punctilious and northern. And so blazingly intelligent … So lucky he doesn’t want me to be intelligent too! He just likes having me make him laugh.”
Somewhere, in the middle of the house, a clock struck seven, and as the last note chimed Otto came back into the room carrying a tray with the champagne bottle in a bucket of ice, and three wine glasses. We watched as he expertly loosened the cork and the golden foaming wine spilled into the three glasses, and we each took one and raised them, all of us smiling because it was suddenly a party. My mother said, “Here’s to the three of us and happy times. Oh, so divinely jokey.”
Later, I was shown to my bedroom, which was either simply luxurious or luxuriously simple, I couldn’t decide which. A fitted bathroom led off it, so I showered, and changed into trousers and a silk shirt, and brushed my hair and replaited it, and returned to the salon. I found Otto and my mother waiting for me, Otto also changed for the evening, and Mother wearing a fresh bedjacket of powder blue with a silk shawl embroidered with pink roses flung across her knees, its long fringe brushing the floor. We had another drink and then Maria served dinner on a low table by the fire. My mother never stopped talking—it was all about the old days when I was growing up, and I kept thinking that Otto would be shocked, but he wasn’t shocked at all, he was curious and much amused and kept asking questions and prompting my mother to tell us more.
“… and that dreadful farm in Denbighshire … Rebecca, do you remember that terrible house? We nearly died of cold and the fire smoked whenever we lit it. That was Sebastian,” she explained for Otto’s benefit. “We all thought he was going to be a famous poet, but he wasn’t any better at writing poetry than he was at sheep farming. In fact, if anything, worse. And I couldn’t think how on earth I could leave him without hurting his feelings and then luckily Rebecca got bronchitis so I had the most perfect excuse.”
“Not so lucky for Rebecca,” suggested Otto.
“It certainly was. She hated it just as much as I did; anyway he had a horrible dog that was always threatening to bite her. Darling, is there any more champagne?”
She ate hardly anything, but sipped glass after glass of the icy wine while Otto and I worked our way steadily through Maria’s delicious, four-course dinner. When it was finished, and the dishes cleared away, my mother asked for some music, and Otto put a Brahms concerto on the record player, turned very low. Mother just went on talking, like a toy that has been overwound and will only stop whirring senselessly around the floor when it finally breaks.
Presently, saying that he had work to do, Otto excused himself and left us, first building up the fire with fresh logs and making sure that we had everything we needed.
“Does he work every evening?” I asked, when he had gone.
“Nearly always. And in the mornings. He’s very punctilious. I think that’s why we’ve got on so well because we’re so different.”
I said, “He adores you.”
“Yes,” said my mother, accepting this. “And the best bit is that he never tried to turn me into someone else; he just accepted me, with my wicked ways and my lurid past.” She touched my plait again. “You’re growing more like your father … I always thought you looked like me, but you don’t, you look like him now. He was very handsome.”
“You know, I don’t even know what his name was.”
“Sam Bellamy. But Bayliss is a much better name, don’t you think? Besides, having you all on my own like that, I always felt you were my child and nobody else’s.”
“I wish you’d tell me about him. You never have.”
“There’s so little to tell. He was an actor, and too good-looking for words.”
“But where did you meet him?”
“He came down to Cornwall with a Summer Stock company doing open-air Shakespeare. It was all terribly romantic, dark blue summer nights and the damp, dewy smell of the grass, and that divine Mendelssohn music and Sam being Oberon.
Through the hou
se give glimmering light,
By the dead and drowsy fire;
Every elf and fairy sprite;
Hop as light as bird from brier.
It was magical. And falling in love with him was part of the magic.”
“Was he in love with you?”
“We both thought he was.”
“But you ran away with him, and married him…”
“Yes. But only because my parents left me with no alternative.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They disliked him. They disapproved. They said I was too young. My mother said why didn’t I marry some nice young man who lived locally, why didn’t I settle down and stop making an exhibition of myself? And if I married an actor, what would people say? I sometimes thought that was all she cared about, what people would say. As if it could possibly matter what anybody said.”
It was, unbelievably, the first time I had ever heard her mention her mother. I said, cautiously prompting, “Didn’t you like her?”
“Oh, darling, it’s so long ago. It’s so difficult to remember. But she stifled and repressed me. I sometimes felt she was trying to choke me with conventions. And Roger had been killed and I missed him so dreadfully. Everything would have been different if Roger had been there.” She smiled. “He was so nice. Almost too nice. A real BV right from the very start.”
“What’s a BV?”
“Bitches’ Victim. He always fell in love with the most impossible girls. And finally he married one. A little blonde doll, with dolly hair and dolly china blue eyes. My mother thought she was sweet. I couldn’t stand her.”
“What was she called?”
“Mollie.” She made a face as though the very word tasted bad.
I laughed. “She can’t have been as bad as all that.”
“I thought she was. So maddeningly tidy. Always cleaning out her handbag or putting her shoes into trees, or sterilizing the baby’s toys.”
“She had a baby then?”
“Yes, a little boy. Poor child, she insisted on calling him Eliot.”
“I think that’s a nice name.”
“Oh, Rebecca, it’s sickening.” It was obvious that nothing Mollie had done could find favour in my mother’s eyes. “I always felt sorry for the child, being saddled with such a dreadful name. And somehow he lived up to it, you know how people do, and after Roger was killed the poor scrap was worse than ever, always hanging round his mother’s neck and having to have a light on in his room at night.”