at the portrait—how the woman dominated the room—Delia went to join the others.
Marjorie fell into step beside her. ‘You felt it,’ she said abruptly. ‘The atmosphere, the presence of this Beatrice Malaspina.’
‘It’s a remarkable portrait.’
‘It’s not just that. The whole place is filled with her presence.’
‘You mean photos, and her furniture; she probably had a lot to do with the way the house looks. Unless she employed an interior designer, and none of it reflects her true personality.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ said Marjorie, and snapped her mouth shut.
Neurotic, Delia said inwardly. Neurotic woman on the verge of middle age, with a chip on her shoulder. I don’t see that she could ever have had anything to do with the woman in that portrait, talk about different worlds.
They gathered before dinner on the part of the colonnade they had named the fresco terrace, and Delia went in search of drinks. ‘There’ll be wine, but they might have the makings of a cocktail. Beatrice Malaspina looked a cocktaily kind of woman to me,’ Delia said. ‘Where did I put that dictionary?’
She came back triumphant, with Benedetta in tow, bearing a tray of bottles and glasses and a very up-to-date cocktail shaker.
‘No problem,’ said Delia, waving at the array. ‘The magic word, cocktail, and hey presto, Benedetta had this out and ready. The jazz age has a lot to answer for, don’t you think?’
George said he was absolutely no good at mixing cocktails, and he looked hopefully at the others.
‘I’ll do it,’ Marjorie said, adding that she’d worked behind the bar at an hotel at one time. Let them despise her; what did she care?
But Delia was full of admiration and interest. ‘Lucky you. I always wanted to do that,’ she said. ‘How come?’
‘My cousin was manager of a big hotel on the south coast. I was staying down there one summer and all the staff left, first one thing and then another. So the barman was rushed off his feet. He showed me what to do, and I got quite good at it.’
Marjorie was mixing the contents of the bottles and adding ice and a soupçon of this and that in a most professional way as she spoke. A final brisk flourish of the shaker, and she poured drinks for all of them.
‘Jolly good,’ said Delia. ‘I vote we appoint you cocktail-maker-in-chief while we’re here. And you can show me how you do it. I wish they taught you really useful stuff like that at school, instead of wanting you to arrange flowers and manage household accounts.’
‘We didn’t do those things at my school,’ said Marjorie. ‘I expect it was a very different kind of school from yours. I went to the local girls’ secondary.’
‘You probably learnt more than I did,’ said Delia cheerfully. ‘I bet you can spell, which is more than Jessica can, let me tell you. She’s a rotten speller.’
‘Was yours a boarding school?’ Marjorie asked, emboldened by her cocktail.
‘Yes. Northern and bleak. Jessica was there, too; that’s where we became friends. It was simply ghastly.’
George was sipping at his cocktail. ‘Don’t you like it?’ Marjorie asked. ‘Can I mix you something different?’
‘On the contrary, I am savouring it. It is an alchemy that you make among the bottles, I think. Also, I am interested in hearing about schools. I wasn’t educated in England, you see.’
‘I thought you weren’t English,’ said Marjorie.
‘I was brought up in Denmark. My mother is Danish. But I was educated abroad, at a Catholic school.’
‘Are you Catholic?’ Marjorie said. ‘I thought scientists were obliged to be atheists.’
‘You can be brought up a Catholic and then give it up as soon as you’re grown up,’ Delia said. ‘I was brought up a Methodist, but nothing would get me into a church now.’
‘The best thing to be is C of E, like me,’ Jessica said. ‘It means you can believe or not believe exactly what you want. And how odd that we should talk about religion, have you noticed that English people never do?’
Delia laughed. ‘My mother told me that I shouldn’t talk about feet, death or religion at the dinner table.’
George raised his eyebrows. ‘What an extraordinary collection of forbidden topics. How very English. But why ever should you wish to talk about feet at the dinner table?’
‘You can talk about horses’ feet—hooves, I should say,’ said Jessica. ‘Any talk of animals is fine. What a dull lot we are.’
‘We can talk about religion here because it’s Italy,’ Marjorie said.
How obvious it was. Italy was a country steeped in religion. Not that it probably had many more truly religious people than anywhere else in Europe, yet religion was all around them. ‘The Vatican and the pope and so on, and all the paintings. One associates Italy with religion. And then, when we’re abroad and the sun’s shining, all kinds of things come out of the woodwork, as it were. Don’t you think so?’
Her words were greeted with silence, as the others thought about it.
‘Our hostess had connections with the Vatican,’ Marjorie went on.
‘How do you know?’ said Jessica.
‘There are photographs of three different popes.’
‘It doesn’t mean she ever met them.’
‘They’re signed, with her name on them.’
‘You call her our hostess as though she were still here.’
‘I think of her like that.’
‘Are there any cardinals?’ said Delia. ‘I dislike clergymen on principle, but I adore paintings of cardinals, as long as they’re kitted out in those gorgeous robes. They always seem to be more theatrical than ecclesiastical.’
‘As it happens, there are several paintings of cardinals,’ George said. ‘I noticed them particularly, even though Benedetta was rushing us along on her tour of the rest of the house. There is one magnificent one in the drawing room, a portrait painted in profile, did you not notice it? The cardinal is touching a large gold ring which he wears on his smallest finger; I believe it is the same ring that is displayed in the glass case in the entrance hall. His picture faces the one of Beatrice Malaspina. I didn’t notice it at first because her portrait is so striking. Then there are others that hang in the passageway beyond the dining room. I, too, very much like paintings of cardinals. These are not very respectful of the cardinals’ dignity, however, there is one where he is striding along, his cloak swirling about his feet, and peeping out from underneath are little devils. Perhaps Beatrice Malaspina was not such a devoted Catholic
