The Collected Stories

‘It’s ridiculous, Roy,’ she shouts, at last losing control. ‘It’s madness all this.’ They have had quarrels before, ordinary quarrels about ordinary matters. Mild insults were later taken back, apologized for, the heat of the moment blamed.

‘Why should it be ridiculous,’ he questions now, ‘that someone should love me? Why should it be?’

‘She’s a child, you’re a man of fifty. How could there possibly be a normal relationship between you? What have you in common?’

‘We fell in love, Henrietta. Love has nothing to do with having things in common or normal relationships. Hesselmann in fact points out –’

‘For God’s sake, Roy, this is not a time for Hesselmann.’

‘He does suggest that love abnormalizes –’

‘So you’re going to become a middle-aged hippy, are you, Roy? You’re going to put on robes and dance and meditate in a field with the Orange People? The Orange People were phony, you said. You said that, Roy.’

‘You know as well as I do that Sharon has nothing to do with the Orange People any more.’

‘You’ll love her grandmother. Not to mention Mr Tamm.’

‘Sharon needs to be protected from her family. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t want ever to go back to that house. You’re being snide, you know.’

‘I’m actually suffering from shock.’

‘There are things we must work out.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Roy, have your menopausal fling with the girl. Take her off to a hotel in Margate or Benidorm.’

She pours herself more sherry, her hands shaking, a harsh fieriness darkening her face, reflecting the fury in her voice. She imagines the pair of them in the places she mentions, people looking at them, he getting to know the girl’s intimate habits. He would become familiar with the contents of her handbag, the way she puts on and takes off her clothes, the way she wakes up. Nineteen years ago, on their honeymoon in La Greve, Roy spoke of this aspect of a close relationship. Henrietta’s own particular way of doing things, and her possessions – her lipstick, her powder compact, her dark glasses, the leather suitcase with her pre-marriage initials on it, the buttoning of her skirts and dresses – were daily becoming as familiar to him as they had been for so long to her. Her childhood existed for him because of what, in passing, she told him of it.

‘D’you remember La Greve?’ she asks, her voice calm again. ‘The woman who called you Professor, those walks in the snow?’

Impatiently he looks away. La Greve is irrelevant, all of it far too long ago. Again he mentions Hesselmann. Not understanding, she says:

‘At least I shall not forget La Greve.’

‘I’ve tried to get over her. I’ve tried not seeing her. None of it works.’

‘She said you would not have told me. What did you intend, Roy?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She said it wasn’t fair, did she?’

‘Yes, she did.’ He pauses. ‘She’s very fond of you, you know.’

In the oven the breast of turkey would be shrivelling, the pineapple pudding of which he was so boyishly fond would be a burnt mess. She says, and feels ashamed of admitting it: ‘I’ve always had affection for her too, in spite of what I say.’

‘I need to talk to her now. I need to tell her we’ve cleared the air.’

He stands up and drinks what remains of his drink. Tears ooze from beneath his spectacles as he looks down at Henrietta, staring at her. He says nothing else except, yet again, that he is sorry. He shuffles and blows his nose as he speaks. Then he turns and goes away, and a few minutes later she hears the bang of the hall door, as she heard it after Sharon Tamm had left the house also.

Henrietta shops in a greengrocer’s that in the Italian small-town manner has no name, just Fiori e Frutta: above the door. The shy woman who serves there, who has come to know her, adds up the cost of fagiolini, pears and spinach on a piece of paper.

‘Mille quattro cento.’ Henrietta counts out the money and gathers up her purchases.

‘Buon giorno, grazie,’ the woman murmurs, and Henrietta wishes her good-day and passes out into the street.

The fat barber sleeps in his customers’ chair, his white overall as spotless as a surgeon’s before an operation. In the window his wife knits, glancing up now and again at the women who come and go in the Maigri Moda. It is Tuesday and the Jollycaffe is closed. The men who usually sit outside it are nowhere to be seen.

Henrietta buys a slice of beef, enough for one. In the mini-market she buys eggs and a packet of zuppa di verdura, and biscotti strudel ‘cocktail di frutta’, which have become her favourites. She climbs up through the town, to the appartamento in the Piazza Santa Lucia. She is dressed less formally than she thought suitable for middle age in England. She wears a denim skirt, blue canvas shoes, a blue shirt which she bought before the weekend from Signora Leici. Her Italian improves a little every day, due mainly to the lessons she has with the girl in the Informazioni. They are both determined that by the winter she will know enough to teach English to the youngest children in the orphanage. Sister Maria has said she would welcome that.

It is May. On the verges of the meadows and the wheat fields that stretch below the town pale roses are in bloom. Laburnum blossoms in the vineyards, wires for the vines stretching between the narrow trunks of the trees. It is the season of broom and clover, of poppies, and geraniums forgotten in the grass. Sleepy vipers emerge from crevices, no longer kept down by the animals that once grazed these hillsides. Because of them Henrietta has bought rubber boots for walking in the woods or up Monte Totona.