the pair of them are digging out ditches.’
The letter she had written would remain in her drawer. In the old man’s senile fantasy her husband would continue to work on the cliff land, to cut timber in the woods, and help her with the Friday shopping, as he had once upon a time. In the old man’s senile fantasy there was repentance, and forgiveness.
‘Those are terrible things you said,’ her mother whispered, still sitting at the table, her chop congealed in its fat. ‘Enough has happened to us without that.’
When the old man died there would be no more talk of her husband, and when her mother died the task of making Hiney’s bed would be hers, and there would only be Hiney and herself to cook for. Hiney would never marry because all Hiney was interested in was work. People would be sorry for her, but they would always say it was her foolishness that had dragged the family through disgrace, her fault for marrying a scoundrel. In the farmhouse and the neighbourhood that was the person she had become.
That is Deborah, Oliver said to himself: my daughter has come to see me. But at the pavement table of the cafe where he sat he did not move. He did not even smile. He had, after all, only caught a glimpse of a slight girl in a yellow dress, of fair hair, and sunglasses and a profile: it might not be she at all.
Yet, Oliver insisted to himself, you know a thing like that. You sense your flesh and blood. And why should Deborah be in Perugia unless she planned to visit him? The girl was alone. She had hurried into the hotel next to the cafe in a businesslike manner, not as a sightseer would.
Oliver was a handsome man of forty-seven, with greying hair, and open, guileless features. This morning he was dressed as always he was when he made the journey to Perugia: in a pale-cream linen suit, a pale shirt with a green stripe in it, and the tie of an English public school. His tan shoes shone; the socks that matched the cream of his suit were taut over his ankles.
He summoned the waitress who had just finished serving the people at the table next to his and ordered another cappuccino. This particular girl went off duty at eleven and the waitress who replaced her invariably made out the bill for one cappuccino only. It was fair enough, Oliver argued to himself, since he was a regular customer at the cafe and spent far more there than a tourist would.
What he had seen in the girl who’d gone into the hotel was a resemblance to Angelica, who was slight and fair-haired also, and had the same quick little walk and rather small face. If the girl had paused and for some reason taken off her dark glasses he would at once, with warm nostalgia, have recognized her mother’s deep, dark eyes, of that he was certain. He wouldn’t, of course, have been so sure had it not been for the resemblance. Since she’d grown up he’d only seen photographs of his daughter.
‘It was best to let whatever Deborah had planned just happen, best not to upset the way she wanted it. He could ask for her at the reception desk of the hotel. He could be waiting for her in the hall, and they could lunch together. He could show her about the town, put her into the picture gallery for an hour while he waited at the cafe across the street; afterwards they could sit over a drink. But that would be all his doing, not Deborah’s, and it wouldn’t be fair. Such a programme would also be expensive, for Deborah, in spite of being at a smart hotel, might well not be able to offer a contribution: it would not be unlike Angelica to keep her short. Oliver’s own purpose in being in Perugia that morning was to visit the Credito Italiano, to make certain that the monthly amount from Angelica had come. He had cashed a cheque, but of course that had to be made to last.
He smiled and thanked her, then blew gently at the foam of his cappuccino and sipped a little of the coffee. He lit a cigarette. You could sit all day here, he reflected, while the red-haired Perugians went by, young men in twos and threes, and the foreign students from the language schools, and the tourists who toiled up, perspiring, from the car parks. Idling time away, just ruminating, was lovely.
Eventually Oliver paid for his coffee and left. He should perhaps buy some meat, in case his daughter arrived at his house at a mealtime. Because it was expensive he rarely did buy meat, once in a blue moon a packet of cooked turkey slices, which lasted for ages. There was a butcher’s he often passed in a side street off the via dei Priori, but this morning it was full of women, all of them pressing for attention. Oliver couldn’t face the clamour and the long wait he guessed there’d be. The butcher’s in Betona might still be open when he arrived off the five past twelve bus. Probably best left till then in any case, meat being tricky in the heat.
He descended from the city centre by a steep short-cut, eventually arriving at the bus stop he favoured. He saved a little by using this particular fare-stage, and though he did not often make the journey to Perugia all such economies added up. What a marvellous thing to happen, that Deborah had come! Oliver smiled as he waited for his bus in the midday sunshine; the best things were always a surprise.
Deborah had a single memory of her father. He’d come to the flat one Sunday afternoon and she’d been at the top of the short flight of stairs that joined the flat’s two floors. She hadn’t known who he was but had watched and listened, sensing the charged atmosphere. At the door the man was smiling. He said her mother was looking well. He hoped she wouldn’t mind, he said. Her mother was cross. Deborah had been five at the time.
‘You know I mind,’ she’d heard her mother say.
‘I was passing. Unfriendly just to pass, I thought. We shouldn’t not ever talk to one another again, Angelica.’
Her mother’s voice was lowered then. She spoke more than she had already, but Deborah couldn’t hear a word.
‘Well, no point,’ he said. ‘No point in keeping you.’
Afterwards, when Deborah asked, her mother told her who the man was. Her mother was truthful and found deception difficult. When two people didn’t get on any more, she said, it wasn’t a good idea to try to keep some surface going.
He’d lit a cigarette while they’d been talking. Softly, he’d tried to interrupt her mother. He’d wanted to come in, but her mother hadn’t permitted that.
‘I’m here because of a mistake? Is that it?’ Deborah pinned her mother down in a quarrel years after that Sunday afternoon. It was her mother’s way of putting it when her marriage came up: two people had made a mistake. Mistakes were best forgotten, her mother said.
The dwelling Oliver occupied, in the hills above the village of Betona, was a stone building of undistinguished shape and proportions. It had once housed sheep during the frozen winter months, and wooden stairs, resembling a heavily constructed ladder, led to
