The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories Volume Two

‘But how’s she going to pay for it?’

‘Luckily the Third Programme’s commissioning her to do some arty programmes. They offered her a choice of The Cid – El Thid, you know – and the Borgias. Well the Borghese, then. And Judith settled for the Borgias.’

‘The Borgias,’ I said. ‘Judith?’

‘Yes, quite. I said that too, in that tone of voice. She saw my point. She says the epic is right up her street, whereas the Renaissance has never been on her wavelength. Obviously it couldn’t be, all the magnificence and cruelty and dirt. But of course chivalry and a high moral code and all those idiotically noble goings-on are right on her wavelength.’

‘Is the money the same?’

‘Yes. But is it likely Judith would let money decide? No, she said that one should always choose something new, that isn’t up one’s street. Well, because it’s better for her character, and so on, to get herself unsettled by the Renaissance. She didn’t say that, of course.’

‘Of course not.’

Judith went to Florence; and for some months postcards informed us tersely of her doings. Then Betty decided she must go by herself for a holiday. She had been appalled by the discovery that if her husband was away for a night she couldn’t sleep; and when he went to Australia for three weeks, she stopped living until he came back. She had discussed this with him, and he had agreed that, if she really felt the situation to be serious, he would dispatch her by air, to Italy, in order to recover her self-respect. As she put it.

I got this letter from her: ‘It’s no use, I’m coming home. I might have known. Better face it, once you’re really married you’re not fit for man nor beast. And if you remember what I used to be like! Well! I moped around Milan. I sunbathed in Venice, then I thought my tan was surely worth something, so I was on the point of starting an affair with another lonely soul, but I lost heart, and went to Florence to see Judith. She wasn’t there. She’d gone to the Italian Riviera. I had nothing better to do, so I followed her. When I saw the place I wanted to laugh, it’s so much not Judith, you know, all those palms and umbrellas and gaiety at all costs and ever such an ornamental blue sea. Judith is in an enormous stone room up on the hillside above the sea, with grape vines all over the place. You should see her, she’s got beautiful. It seems for the last fifteen years she’s being going to Soho every Saturday morning to buy food at an Italian shop. I must have looked surprised, because she explained she liked Soho. I suppose because all that dreary vice and nudes and prostitutes and everything prove how right she is to be as she is? She told the people in the shop she was going to Italy, and the signora said, what a coincidence, she was going back to Italy too, and she did hope an old friend like Miss Castlewell would visit her there. Judith said to me: “I felt lacking, when she used the word friend. Our relations have always been formal. Can you understand it?” she said to me. “For fifteen years,” I said to her. She said: “I think I must feel it’s a kind of imposition, don’t you know, expecting people to feel friendship for one.” Well. I said: “You ought to understand it, because you’re like that yourself.” “Am I?” she said. “Well, think about it,” I said. But I could see she didn’t want to think about it. Anyway, she’s here, and I’ve spent a week with her. The widow Maria Rineiri inherited her mother’s house, so she came home, from Soho. On the ground floor is a tatty little rosticceria patronized by the neighbours. They are all working people. This isn’t tourist country, up on the hill. The widow lives above the shop with her little boy, a nasty little brat of about ten. Say what you like, the English are the only people who know how to bring up children, I don’t care if that’s insular. Judith’s room is at the back, with a balcony. Underneath her room is the barber’s shop, and the barber is Luigi Rineiri, the widow’s younger brother. Yes, I was keeping him until the last. He is about forty, tall dark handsome, a great bull, but rather a sweet fatherly bull. He has cut Judith’s hair and made it lighter. Now it looks like a sort of gold helmet. Judith is all brown. The widow Rineiri has made her a white dress and a green dress. They fit, for a change. When Judith walks down the street to the lower town, all the Italian males take one look at the golden girl and melt in their own oil like ice cream. Judith takes all this in her stride. She sort of acknowledges the homage. Then she strolls into the sea and vanishes into the foam. She swims five miles every day. Naturally. I haven’t asked Judith whether she has collected herself, because you can see she hasn’t. The widow Rineiri is match-making. When I noticed this I wanted to laugh, but luckily I didn’t because Judith asked me, really wanting to know: “Can you see me married to an Italian barber?” (Not being snobbish, but stating the position, so to speak.) “Well, yes,” I said, “you’re the only woman I know who I can see married to an Italian barber. “Because it wouldn’t matter who she married, she’d always be her own person. “At any rate, for a time,” I said. At which she said, asperously: “You can use phrases like for a time in England but not in Italy.” Did you ever see England, at least London, as the home of licence, liberty and free love? No, neither did I, but of course she’s right. Married to Luigi it would be the family, the neighbours, the church and the bambini. All the same she’s thinking about it, believe it or not. Here she’s quite different, all relaxed and free. She’s melting in the attention she gets. The widow mothers her and makes her coffee all the time, and listens to a lot of good advice about how to bring up that nasty brat of hers. Unluckily she doesn’t take it. Luigi is crazy for her. At mealtimes she goes to the trattoria in the upper square and all the workmen treat her like a goddess. Well, a film star then. I said to her, you’re mad to come home. For one thing her rent is ten bob a week, and you eat pasta and drink red wine till you bust for about one and sixpence. No, she said, it would be nothing but self-indulgence to stay. Why? I said. She said, she’s got nothing to stay for. (Ho ho.) And besides, she’s done her research on the Borghese, though so far she can’t see her way to an honest presentation of the facts. What made these people tick? she wants to know. And so she’s only staying because of the cat. I forgot to mention the cat. This is a town of cats. The Italians here love their cats. I wanted to feed a stray cat at the table, but the waiter said no; and after lunch, all the waiters came with trays crammed with leftover food and stray cats came from everywhere to eat. And at dark when the tourists go in to feed and the beach is empty – you know how empty and forlorn a beach is at dusk? – well, cats appear from everywhere. The beach seems to move, then you see it’s cats. They go stalking along the thin inch of grey water at the edge of the sea, shaking their paws crossly at each step, snatching at the dead little fish, and throwing them with their mouths up on to the dry sand. Then they scamper after them. You’ve never seen such a snarling and fighting. At dawn when the fishing boats come in to the empty beach, the cats are there in dozens. The fishermen throw them bits of fish. The cats snarl and fight over it. Judith gets up early and goes down to watch. Sometimes Luigi goes too, being tolerant. Because what he really likes is to join the evening promenade with Judith on his arm around and around the square of the upper town. Showing her off. Can you see Judith? But she does it. Being tolerant. But she smiles and enjoys the attention she gets, there’s no doubt of it.

‘She has a cat in her room. It’s a kitten really, but it’s pregnant. Judith says she can’t leave until the kittens are born. The cat is too young to have kittens. Imagine Judith. She sits on her bed in that great stone room, with her bare feet on the stone floor and watches the cat, and tries to work out why a healthy uninhibited Italian cat always fed on the best from the rosticceria should be neurotic. Because it is. When it sees Judith watching it gets nervous and starts licking at the roots of its tail. But Judith goes on watching, and says about Italy that the reason why the English love the Italians is because the Italians make the English feel superior. They have no discipline. And that’s a despicable reason for one nation to love another. Then she talks about Luigi and says he has no sense of guilt, but a sense of sin; whereas she has no sense of sin but she has guilt. I haven’t asked her if this has been an insuperable barrier, because judging from how she looks, it hasn’t. She says she would rather have a sense of sin, because sin can be atoned for, and if she understood sin, perhaps she would be more at home with the Renaissance. Luigi is very healthy, she says, and not neurotic. He is a Catholic of course. He doesn’t mind that she’s an atheist. His mother has explained to him that the English are all pagans, but good people at heart. I suppose he thinks a few smart sessions with the local priest would set Judith on the right path for good and all. Meanwhile the cat walks nervously around the room, stopping to lick, and when it can’t stand Judith watching it another second, it rolls over on the floor, with its paws tucked up, and rolls up its eyes, and Judith scratches its lumpy pregnant stomach and tells it to relax. It makes me nervous to see her, it’s not like her, I don’t know why. Then Luigi shouts up from the barber’s shop, then he comes up and stands at the door laughing, and Judith laughs, and the widow says: Children, enjoy yourselves. And off they go, walking down to the town eating ice cream. The cat follows them. It won’t let Judith out of its sight, like a dog. When she swims miles out to sea, the cat hides under a beach hut until she comes back. Then she carries it back up the hill, because that nasty little boy chases it. Well. I’m coming home tomorrow thank God, to my dear old Billy, I was mad ever to leave him. There is something about Judith and Italy that has upset me, I don’t know what. The point is, what on earth can Judith and Luigi talk about? Nothing. How can they? And of course it doesn’t matter. So I turn out to be a prude as well. See you next week.’

It was my turn for a dose of the sun, so I didn’t see Betty. On my way back from Rome I stopped off in Judith’s resort and walked up through narrow streets to the upper town, where, in the square with the vine-covered trattoria at the corner, was a house with ROSTICCERIA written in black paint on a cracked wooden board over a low door. There was a door curtain of red beads, and flies settled on the beads. I opened the beads with my hands and looked into a small dark room with a stone counter. Loops of salami hung from metal hooks. A glass bell covered some plates of cooked meats. There were flies on the salami and on the glass bell. A few tins on the wooden shelves, a couple of pale loaves, some wine casks and an open case of sticky pale green grapes covered with fruit flies seemed to be the only stock. A single wooden table wit two chairs stood in a corner, and two workmen sat there, eating lumps of sausage and bread. Through another bead curtain at the back came a short, smoothly fat, slender-limbed woman with greying hair. I asked for Miss Castlewell, and her face changed. She said in an offended, offhand way: ‘Miss Castlewell left last week.’ She took a white cloth from under the counter, and flicked at the flies on the glass bell. ‘I’m a friend of hers,’ I said, and she said: ‘Si,’ and put her hands palm down on the counter and looked at me, expressionless. The workmen got up, gulped down the last of their wine, nodded and went. She ciao’d them; and looked back at me. Then, since I didn’t go, she called: ‘Luigi!’ A shout came from the back room, there was a rattle of beads, and in came first a wiry sharp-faced boy, and then Luigi. He was tall, heavy-shouldered, and his black rough hair was like a cap, pulled low over his brows. He looked good-natured, but at the moment uneasy. His sister said something, and he stood beside her, an ally, and confirmed: ‘Miss Castlewell went away.’ I was on the point of giving up, when through the bead curtain that screened off a dazzling light eased a thin tabby cat. It was ugly and it walked uncomfortably, with its back quarters bunched up. The child suddenly let out a ‘Ssssss’ through his teeth, and the cat froze. Luigi said something sharp to the child, and something encouraging to the cat, which sat down, looked straight in front of it, then began frantically licking at its flanks. ‘Miss Castlewell was offended with us,’ said Mrs Rineiri suddenly, and with dignity. ‘She left early one morning. We did not expect her to go.’ I said: ‘Perhaps she had to go home and finish some work.’

Mrs Rinieri shrugged, then sighed. Then she exchanged a hard look with her brother. Clearly the subject had been discussed, and closed forever.

I’ve known Judith a long time,’ I said, trying to find the right note. ‘She’s a remarkable woman. She’s a poet.’ But there was no response to this at all. Meanwhile the child, with a fixed bared-teeth grin, was staring at the cat, narrowing his eyes. Suddenly he let out another ‘Ssssssss’ and added a short high yelp. The cat shot backwards, hit the wall, tried desperately to claw its way up the wall, came to its senses and again sat down and began its urgent, undirected licking at its fur. This time Luigi cuffed the child, who yelped in earnest, and then ran out into the street past the cat. Now that the way was clear the cat shot across the floor, up to the counter, and bounded past Luigi’s shoulder and straight through the bead curtain into the barber’s shop, where it landed with a thud.

‘Judith was sorry when she left us,’ said Mrs Rineiri uncertainly. ‘She was crying.’

‘I’m sure she was.’

And so,’ said Mrs Rineiri, with finality, laying her hands down again, and looking past me at the bead curtains. That was the end. Luigi nodded brusquely at me, and went into the back. I said goodbye to Mrs Rinieri and walked back to the lower town. In the square I saw the child, sitting on the running board of a lorry parked outside the trattoria, drawing in the dust with his bare toes, and directing in front of him a blank, unhappy stare.

I had to go through Florence, so I went to the address Judith had been at. No, Miss Castlewell had not been back. Her papers and books were still there. Would I take them back with me to England? I made a great parcel and brought them back to England.

I telephoned Judith and she said she had already written for the papers to be sent, but it was kind of me to bring them. There had seemed to be no point, she said, in returning to Florence.

‘Shall I bring them over?’

‘I would be very grateful, of course.’

Judith’s flat was chilly, and she wore a bunchy sage-green woollen dress. Her hair was still a soft gold helmet, but she looked pale and rather pinched. She stood with her back to a single bar of electric fire – lit because I demanded it – with her legs apart and her arms folded. She contemplated me.

I went to the Rineiris’ house.’

‘Oh. Did you?’

‘They seemed to miss you.’

She said nothing.

I saw the cat too.’

‘Oh. Oh, I suppose you and Betty discussed it?’ This was with a small unfriendly smile.

‘Well, Judith, you must see we were likely to?’

She gave this her consideration and said: ‘I don’t understand why people discuss other people. Oh – I’m not criticizing you. But I don’t see why you are so interested. I don’t understand human behaviour and I’m not particularly interested.’

‘I think you should write to the Rineiris.’

‘I wrote and thanked them, of course.’

‘I don’t mean that.’

‘You and Betty have worked it out?’

‘Yes, we talked about it. We thought we should talk to you, so you should write to the Rineiris.’

‘Why?’

‘For one thing, they are both very fond of you.’

‘Fond,’ she said smiling.

‘Judith, I’ve never in my life felt such an atmosphere of being let down.’

Judith considered this. ‘When something happens that shows one there is really a complete gulf in understanding, what is there to say?’

‘It could scarcely have been a complete gulf in understanding. I suppose you are going to say we are being interfering?’

Judith showed distaste. ‘That is a very stupid word. And it’s a stupid idea. No one can interfere with me if I don’t let them. No, it’s that I don’t understand people. I don’t understand why you or Betty should care. Or why the Rineiris should, for that matter,’ she added with the small tight smile.

‘Judith!’

‘If you’ve behaved stupidly, there’s no point in going on. You put an end to it.’

‘What happened? Was it the cat?’

Yes, I suppose so. But it’s not important.’ She looked at me, saw my ironical face, and said: ‘The cat was too young to have kittens. That is all there was to it.’

‘Have it your way. But that is obviously not all there is to it.’

‘What upset me is that I don’t understand at all why I was so upset then.’

‘What happened? Or don’t you want to talk about it?’

‘I don’t give a damn whether I talk about it or not. You really do say the most extraordinary things, you and Betty. If you want to know, I’ll tell you. What does it matter?’

I would like to know, of course.’

‘Of course!’ she said. ‘In your place I wouldn’t care. Well, I think the essence of the thing was that I must have had the wrong attitude to that cat. Cats are supposed to be independent. They are supposed to go off by themselves to have their kittens. This one didn’t. It was climbing up on to my bed all one night and crying for attention. I don’t like cats on my bed. In the morning I saw she was in pain. I stayed with her all that day. Then Luigi – he’s the brother, you know.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Betty mention him? Luigi came up to say it was time I went for a swim. He said the cat should look after itself. I blame myself very much. That’s what happens when you submerge yourself in somebody else.’

Her look at me was now defiant; and her body showed both defensiveness and aggression. ‘Yes. It’s true. I’ve always been afraid of it. And in the last few weeks I’ve behaved badly. It’s because I let it happen.’

‘Well, go on.’

‘I left the cat and swam. It was late, so it was only for a few minutes. When I came out of the sea the cat had followed me and had had a kitten on the beach. That little beast Michele – the son, you know? – well, he always teased the poor thing, and now he had frightened her off the kitten. It was dead, though. He held it up by the tail and waved it at me as I came out of the sea. I told him to bury it. He scooped two inches of sand away and pushed the kitten in – on the beach, where people are all day. So I buried it properly. He had run off. He was chasing the poor cat. She was terrified and running up the town. I ran too. I caught Michele and I was so angry I hit him. I don’t believe in hitting children. I’ve been feeling beastly about it ever since.’

‘You were angry.’

‘It’s no excuse. I would never have believed myself capable of hitting a child. I hit him very hard. He went off crying. The poor cat had got under a big lorry parked in the square. Then she screamed. And then a most remarkable thing happened. She screamed just once, and all at once cats just materialized. One minute there was just one cat, lying under a lorry, and the next, dozens of cats. They sat in a big circle around the lorry, all quite still, and watched my poor cat.’

‘Rather moving,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘There is no evidence one way or the other,” I said in inverted commas, ‘that the cats were there out of concern for a friend in trouble.’

‘No,’ she said energetically. ‘There isn’t. It might have been curiosity. Or anything. How do we know? However, I crawled under the lorry. There were two paws sticking out of the cat’s back end. The kitten was the wrong way round. It was stuck. I held the cat down with one hand and pulled the kitten out with the other.’ She held out her long white hands. They were still covered with fading scars and scratches. ‘She bit and yelled, but the kitten was alive. She left the kitten and crawled across the square into the house. Then all the cats got up and walked away. It was the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen. They vanished again. One minute they were all there, and then they had vanished. I went after the cat, with the kitten. Poor little thing, it was covered with dust -being wet, don’t you know. The cat was on my bed. There was another kitten coming, but it got stuck too. So when she screamed and screamed I just pulled it out. The kittens began to suck. One kitten was very big. It was a nice fat black kitten. It must have hurt her. But she suddenly bit out – snapped, don’t you know, like a reflex action, at the back of the kitten’s head. It died, just like that. Extraordinary, isn’t it?’ she said, blinking hard, her lips quivering. She was its mother, but she killed it. Then she ran off the bed and went downstairs into the shop under the counter. I called Luigi. You know, he’s Mrs Rineiri’s brother.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘He said she was too young, and she was badly frightened and very hurt. He took the alive kitten to her but she got up and walked away. She didn’t want it. Then Luigi told me not to look. But I followed him. He held the kitten by the tail and he banged it against the wall twice. Then he dropped it into the rubbish heap. He moved aside some rubbish with his toe, and put the kitten there and pushed rubbish over it. Then Luigi said the cat should be destroyed. He said she was badly hurt and it would always hurt her to have kittens.’

‘He hasn’t destroyed her. She’s still alive. But it looks to me as if he were right.’

‘Yes, I expect he was.’

What upset you – that he killed the kitten?’

Oh no, I expect the cat would if he hadn’t. But that isn’t the point, is it?’

‘What is the point?’

‘I don’t think I really know.” She had been speaking breathlessly, and fast. Now she said slowly: ‘It’s not a question of right or wrong, is it? Why should it be? It’s a question of what one is. That night Luigi wanted to go promenading with me. For him, that was that. Something had to be done, and he’d done it. But I felt ill. He was very nice to me. He’s a very good person,’ she said, defiantly.

‘Yes, he looks it.’

‘That night I couldn’t sleep. I was blaming myself. I should never have left the cat to go swimming. Well, and then I decided to leave the next day. And I did. And that’s all. The whole thing was a mistake, from start to finish.’

‘Going to Italy at all?’

‘Oh, to go for a holiday would have been all right.’

‘You’ve done all that work for nothing. You mean you aren’t going to make use of all that research?’

‘No. It was a mistake.’

‘Why don’t you leave it a few weeks and see how things are then?’

‘Why?’

‘You might feel differently about it.’

‘What an extraordinary thing to say. Why should I? Oh, you mean, time passing, healing wounds – that sort of thing? What an extraordinary idea. It’s always seemed to me an extraordinary idea. No, right from the beginning I’ve felt ill at ease with the whole business, not myself at all.’

‘Rather irrationally, I should have said.’

Judith considered this, very seriously. She frowned while she thought it over. Then she said: ‘But if one cannot rely on what one feels, what can one rely on?’

‘On what one thinks, I should have expected you to say.’

‘Should you? Why? Really, you people are all very strange. I don’t understand you.’ She turned off the electric fire, and her face closed up. She smiled, friendly and distant, and said: ‘I don’t really see any point at all in discussing it.’

Each Other

‘I suppose your brother’s coming again?’

‘He might.’

He kept his back bravely turned while he adjusted tie, collar, and jerked his jaw this way and that to check his shave. Then, with all pretexts used, he remained rigid, his hand on his tie knot, looking into the mirror past his left cheek at the body of his wife, which was disposed prettily on the bed, weight on its right elbow, its two white forearms engaged in the movements obligatory for filing one’s nails. He let his hand drop and demanded: ‘What do you mean, he might?’ She did not answer, but held up a studied hand to inspect five pink arrows. She was a thin, very thin, dark girl of about eighteen. Her pose, her way of inspecting her nails, her pink-striped nightshirt which showed long, thin, white legs – all her magazine attitudes were an attempt to hide an anxiety as deep as his; for her breathing, like his, was loud and shallow.