with all its problems and expenses, and everyone tells me to be grateful.’
‘You’re not exactly poor, Caty,’ I said.
She looked at me for a moment, deciding if I knew her well enough to make such a personal remark. But I did know her well enough.
‘You know what the arrangement was … If he’s going down to the river, I’ll kill the little devil.’
I followed her gaze to where her small son was dragging a toy cart across the lawn. As if sensing that he was being watched, he changed direction and started back up towards the smart new sauna again. Caterina went back to her tea and toast. ‘He’s changed a lot, you know … I swore to my father that Steve had come through the war unmarred, but it took ten years to take effect. And then the last few years have been hell … hell for both of us, and little William, too!’
‘He had a lousy war, Caty,’ I said.
‘So did a lot of other people.’
I remembered the day in 1944 when I went into Nice prison just a few hours after the Gestapo had moved out. I was with the forward elements of the American Army. There was another Englishman with me. We asked each other no personal questions. He was wearing Intelligence Corps badges, but he knew Steve Champion all right, and he was probably sent directly from London, as I had been. The Germans had destroyed all the documents. I suppose London were sure they would have done, or they would have sent someone more important than me to chase it.
‘Look at that,’ said this other officer, when we were kicking the cupboards of the interrogation room apart. It was a shabby room, with a smell of ether and carbolic, a framed engraving of Salzburg and some broken wine bottles in the fireplace. He pointed to a bottle on the shelf. ‘Steve Champion’s fingertips,’ said my companion. He took the bottle and swirled the brine around so that through the mottled glass I saw four shrunken pieces of dark brown organic matter that jostled together as they were pushed to the centre of the whirling fluid. I looked again and found that they were four olives, just as the label said, but for a moment I had shivered. And each time I remembered it I shivered again. ‘You’re right, Caty,’ I said. ‘A lot of people had it much worse.’
Overhead the clouds were low and puffy, like a dirty quilt pulled over the face of the countryside.
‘There was all that “we Celts” nonsense. I began to believe that Wales was little different from Brittany. Little did I know … My God!’ said Caterina. She was still watching Billy in the garden. ‘The banks of the river are so muddy this last week … the rain … one of the village boys was drowned there this time last year.’ She looked up at the carved wooden crucifix on the wall above the TV set.
‘He’ll be all right.’ I said it to calm her.
‘He never dares to go down as far as the paddock when Steve visits. But he just defies me!’
‘Do you want me to get him?’
She gave a despairing smile. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She tugged at her hair. I was a ‘friend of Steve’s’: she didn’t want me to get any kind of response from Billy that she had failed to get. ‘We’ll watch from here,’ she said.
‘That’s probably best,’ I agreed.
‘You English!’ she said. I got the full blast of her anxiety. ‘You’re probably a fully paid-up subscriber to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.’
‘That wouldn’t necessarily make me a child-beater,’ I said. ‘And it’s the Royal Society.’
‘No one can live with a man who is racked with guilt. And Steve is racked with guilt.’
‘You’re not talking about the war?’ I asked.
‘I’m talking about the marriage,’ she said.
‘Because Steve has no need to feel guilty about the war,’ I told her.
‘My mother told me about Englishmen,’ said Caterina. She raised her hand in a gesture more appropriate to an Italian market than to an English drawing-room. And now her voice, too, carried an inflection of her birth ties. ‘You don’t have to have something to feel guilty about!’ Her voice was high and almost shrill. ‘Don’t you understand that? Guilt is like pain – it hurts just the same whether it’s real or imagined!’
‘I’ll have to think about that,’ I said defensively.
‘You think about it, then. I’ll go and fetch William.’ She pushed the silk cosy down over the teapot to keep the tea warm while she was gone. But she did not go. She kept her hands round it and stared into the distance. Or perhaps she was staring at the silver-framed photo of her brother Marius, the young priest who’d died in that carbolic-smelling basement. Suddenly the sun stabbed into the room. It wasn’t real sun, there was no warmth in it, and precious little colour. It spilled over the embroidered traycloth like weak lemon tea, and made a rim round Caty’s hair.
They were both like their mother, these Baroni girls. Even as children they’d looked more like visiting townspeople than like village kids. Tall and slim, Caty had that sort of ease and confidence that belied the indecision she expressed.
‘I won’t stay here,’ she said, as if her thoughts had raced on far beyond our conversation. ‘My sister wants me to help with her boutique in Nice. With the money I get from the house, we could start another shop, perhaps.’
The sun’s cross-light scrawled a thousand wrinkles upon her face, and I was forced to see her as she was, instead of through the flattering haze of my memories. Perhaps she read my thoughts. ‘I’m getting old,’ she said. ‘Steve’s getting old, too, and so are you.’ She smoothed her hair, and touched the gold cross that she wore.
She was still attractive. Whatever kind of post-natal exercises she’d done after Billy’s birth had restored her figure to that of the trim young woman Steve had married. She used just sufficient make-up to compensate for the pale English winters she’d endured for so long. Her nails were manicured, and long enough to convince me that she didn’t spend much time at the sink, and her hair was styled in the fashion that requires frequent visits to the hairdresser.
She smoothed the striped silk pants across her knee. They were stylish and tailored. She looked like an illustration that American Vogue might run if they ever did an article about English crumpet. I wondered if she spent many elegant afternoons sitting by the log fire in her fine clothes, pouring herself lemon tea from a silver teapot.
‘Do you know what I think?’ she said.
I waited a long time and then I said, ‘What do you think, Caty?’
‘I don’t believe you just bumped into Steve. I think you were sent after him. I think you are still working for the Secret Service or something – just like in the war. I think you are after Steve.’
‘Why would anyone be after him, Caty?’
‘He’s changed,’ she said. ‘You must have noticed that yourself. I wouldn’t be surprised what he was mixed up in. He has this sort of schizophrenia and an obsession with secrecy. I don’t know if you get like that in the Secret Service, or whether the Secret Service choose that sort of man. But it’s hell to live with, I’ll tell you that.’
‘I
