Rose gives her account

The lonely days continue, so that I sometimes wonder what it could have been, precisely, that brought me home ahead of time, and whether the others will ever return from Tuscany at all? I have been tending Bill’s vegetables ( his tomatoes are splendid!), and walking the dogs daily; but from the glances I receive from other dog-walkers on the common, I glean the fact that my presence there is seen as no substitute for Bill’s. People stop me to ask about him, often, and I have been at a loss to know how much I ought to reveal about his change of status.

Only the Brigadier, beneath whose sternly military exterior there evidently beats a rather sentimental heart – only the Brigadier has seen, or guessed the truth. He thinks it an excellent development. “Two people who were made for each other if ever there was such a thing!” he barked at me yesterday ( I remain uncertain as to whether I ought best to curtsey, or salute, at the end of one of his pronouncements). He only wonders if Bill will have the stamina to ‘square up to the old lady’.

I have wondered a good deal about this myself. Sitting alone in the gatehouse in the evenings, I have tried to picture them at the villa; and it has seemed to me that wherever they are, and whatever they should happen to be doing at any given moment, whether breakfasting in the loggia or sitting beneath the plane trees in the heat of the long afternoons, it is Lady Macauley’s voice I hear, and hers the presence which, above all others, decides and manipulates events.

I was engaged in just such reflections over coffee in the kitchen this morning. I was telling myself that if Lady Macauley were ever going to defer to anyone, it would be to Bill, and that, really, I ought to have more confidence in him. I ought to have learnt by now at least, that his is the kind of broad geniality which enables him not so much to engage with obstacles, as simply to fail to notice they are there. I was enjoying my reflections, and had been transported by them so very far, so entirely blissfully away, that the sudden appearance of Rose on the garden path, operated rather as an apparition might have done - or at any rate as a rather disagreeable jolt.

She guessed my thoughts – she always does. “You look as if you had seen a ghost!” she laughed, coming into the kitchen and flopping down, as always, on her favourite stool. “But it’s only me, returned unexpectedly, and only for the least possible number of days.... I had family matters to attend to here, but I mean to return at once. I daren’t turn my back on them all for more than two seconds, if you want to know the truth, events are moving there at such a pace.”

I was prepared on this occasion to let her have her head. That she had much to relate I didn’t doubt; and that she would slant it in such a way as to reflect her own best interests most of all, was doubtless also. But I was prepared, for once, to overlook small irritations – my thirst for information being on this occasion greater than my distaste for what I have come to think of as the ‘Mountjoy twist’.

Her first offering was not altogether to my liking, for all that. There was something patently mischievous, malicious almost, in her announcement that they had all gone, yesterday, to visit ‘my’ Cesare, and his almost inconceivably ancient mother, in what she called their preposterous palazzo, in Lucca.

“You’ve never seen such a place!” she exclaimed. “You have to penetrate deep into the heart of the town to find it – I was amazed at Bill’s courage, in daring to take the car down so many narrow back streets! And then when you do find it, it looks more like a warehouse or a prison, than a house. You know the sort of thing I’m sure. No concession whatever to houses as we know them: just a vast gate in an impenetrable wall, so that if you haven’t got your glasses on, or don’t peer in the right place, you would quite miss the little brass plate that tells you it’s the Palazzo Restorelli, and that you have to ring for entry...”

I fear my face must have betrayed the agitation I felt, as Rose launched without warning into this account of their visit to the Palazzo Restorelli, which I knew to be the home of the man with the deep Italian eyes who had affected me so unexpectedly at the engagement dinner. There was a part of me which urged her on, longing as I did to hear anything – everything – about him. I drank deep, for three minutes, of her account of the beautiful formal garden at the palazzo, of the dim splendour of the indoor rooms, and the way in which Cesare had finally presented his ancient mother, as if she were the most precious being on earth...

But I finally experienced a deep aversion to hearing these things from Rose; who would have liked Cesare for herself, I knew, and who would for that reason be at pains to try to belittle him in my eyes. I pulled her up short therefore – I am hardly able to describe the sheer effort of will it cost me to do it. I switched the subject as adroitly, and apparently casually as I could; I said that Cesare and his aged mother were very well, but that one old countess, one palazzo, were much like any other, when you came right down to it - and that what was of more immediate present interest to me was to know how life in the villa went on, and how Pamela and Roland in particular, were adjusting to it? Mercifully, she took the bait, and swallowed it, almost without appearing to draw breath.

“Oh well, they’re soldiering on you know” she said. “But pretty much out of their depth, as you can imagine. And striking the one false note, if you ask me. Poor Pamela has brought all the wrong sorts of clothes to wear, for a start! She never thought there would be any call for a bathing suit; she turned quite pale at the prospect, and looks most peculiar, sitting beside the pool in her voluminous skirts.... She has never had any experience of sun-screen either, so has turned a very painful-looking shade of puce! And then at dinner, she swathes herself in the usual chiffon – whilst everyone else manages an effect of casual chic. Not the Lucchese grandees of course. They get themselves up pretty spectacularly too - but somehow the achieved effect is entirely different....”

“And Roland...?” But for Roland, Rose felt the need to make a longish pause, evidently momentarily lost for words. “Well, what can one say about Roland, except that when once he has delivered himself of his legal advice - which occupied about one hour, on the very first day - he’s left gasping like a stranded minnow, amongst all those super-refined old Italians whom Lady M will keep inviting up to the villa. He wears a short-sleeved shirt, with tie, at dinner you know. He looks most carefully at his range of cutlery, then tries to follow everyone else without being noticed. I think every mouthful must be an acute ordeal for him. He and Pamela sit mute, at table, for the most part – oh, they open their mouths to speak every now and then, but evidently decide against it. On the grounds, one assumes, of their having nothing whatever to say. Sadly, it only adds to the general fish-out-of-water effect that they create. None of the visiting Nobiltà seems to have the least idea of who they are, or what to make of them....”

Rose was well into her stride by now, and obviously had a great deal more to tell. I despised myself a little for wishing to encourage her – but my own desire for knowledge was acute, so I quietly refilled the coffee pot and settled back, as if for the duration...


This part of the story has run-on almost without my bidding, and still has failed to accommodate all I want to say. Seldom have I felt more in need of the luxury of a full chapter in which to spread myself – so I have decided to send caution to the winds, and let it run to a second instalment.