1
Mrs Maisie Evans came into the lounge, pulling down the cuffs of her cardigan. ‘She’s gone, poor soul.’
‘Mm? What’s that?’ Her husband started from the doze into which he always fell immediately after breakfast, the newspaper before his face, waiting for the interior message which, in ten minutes or so, would send him along the passage.
‘She’s gone. Quite peaceful.’ She crossed to the window and drew the curtains so that the sunlight no longer fell on Josh or the colours of carpet and tapestry footstool.
He sank back, crushing the newspaper untidily against his paunch. ‘Poor soul. Poor old soul.’
‘It was a blessed release.’
‘Yes. Yes, I know that. Still, just the same, when it comes. . . .’
‘It comes to us all, sooner or later.’
It was a nice morning. From the London Road the sound of traffic had settled into its daytime murmur, and across a sky which was May now although it might revert to March later on, a Caravelle from some far city screeched down on London Airport. If the window had been open Mrs Evans would almost have fancied she smelled blossom, although none was out yet.
Behind her, Josh was wiping his eyes, but put the handkerchief away sheepishly when his wife turned towards him. ‘I’ll go for the doctor, shall I?’
‘There’s no hurry.’ She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘He’ll be doing his Surgery now. It’s only a formality, after all.’
‘Is she . . . ? Do you need any help?’
‘I’ll get the breakfast things washed up first.’
The television set stood on a low cupboard, the bottom half of a sideboard from which the top had been removed in order that it should better suit the small bright bungalow into which they had moved three years ago. Mrs Evans went to it now and with a little grunt bent down and opened the doors. Half the shelves were neatly stacked with women’s magazines, knitting and embroidery patterns, and two volumes entitled respectively The Home Doctor and The Home Lawyer. On the other shelves were Mrs Evans’s sewing-basket, knitting-bag and embroidery frame, on which was a half-finished garden scene of a cottage and crinolined lady, destined for a tea-cosy. There was also a shabby leather dressing-case marked with the initials F.B.B.
Mrs Evans lifted this out and set it on the table, and fishing at the neck of her jumper brought out from between her square breasts several keys strung on a chain. With one of these she opened the case and began to check through its contents. Still holding the newspaper, Josh hauled himself out of the chair and came to stand beside her.
There were half a dozen pieces of Victorian jewellery loosely wrapped in yellow tissue-paper, a few yellower photographs. Mrs Evans did not bother with these, but busied herself with documents—Birth Certificate, Insurance Policy, Will. Her grey eyes intent behind her spectacles, she checked each one silently. Beside her, Josh idly picked up a photograph: the girl in it was swathed in serge and lace, waisted like a C
hristmas cracker. She had a lovely bust. Her hair was looped in wide bay windows either side of her face, which was plain and very young. Very young.
He put the picture down quickly as his wife stated rather than asked, ‘You drew her pension Friday?’
‘That’s right. As per usual.’
‘Give me the book, then.’
He fished in his breast pocket, found it and gave it to her. She put it with the other documents, replaced everything but the jewellery and locked the case, removing the key from the others round her neck and leaving it in the lock.
She was a thickset woman and he a tallish man. She suddenly grinned up at him and punched him lightly on the arm. ‘Cheer up, Boy! You look as though you’d lost sixpence and found a penny. Perhaps you’d better get out in the sunshine after all.’
His pink face lightened beneath its silver hair, thick as a cat’s fur. ‘Shall I go to the doctor, then?’
‘May as well. He can please himself whether he comes or not. It’s not as if he hadn’t expected it. I’ll put this in her room.’
She turned and moved briskly to the door, the leather case under her arm, but he still stood by the table. ‘You’re sure she’s . . . ?’
‘Don’t be soft! Of course I’m sure. You’d better put on your mac, it’s treacherous out.’
He heard her in the kitchen, running water for the washing-up, stacking the breakfast crockery. In the shadow of the drawn curtain his chair stood temptingly, the embroidered cushions squashed where he had leaned peacefully against them, a bar of sunlight warming the carpet where his feet had rested. No good going along the passage now, he had missed his moment.
He changed his shoes, walking gingerly past the shut door of the other bedroom, put on his macintosh and hat; then, recollecting, took the hat off again. He opened the kitchen door.
‘I’m off, then.’
‘Righto. Don’t hurry yourself, it’s a nice morning.’
‘Do you want anything at the shops?’
‘No, I’ll see to that after the undertaker’s been. The doctor’ll ring them for
you. Tell him she went breakfast-time this morning, very peaceful—say I just found her gone. He can come in after his rounds if he wants to, or he can just make out the certificate straightaway.’
‘Okeydoke.’
He closed the kitchen door, tiptoed past the other, let himself out. The sun was warm, the privet was all in bud; it was indeed a lovely morning. Straightening his shoulders, his face falling into its customary folds of innocent good humour, Josh stepped out cheerfully along the road.
2
The plain stretched away below the town’s terrace to the rim of the distant sea. The air was so clear that the skyscraper at Cesenatico far to the north could be discerned. The long balcony which is San Marino’s town centre seemed to hang in the balmy light, kaleidoscoped by tourists who leaned over its wall, posed against its fountain, clustered before the Town Hall at the far end with its small sentries in green and red. Plodding up the steep streets from the charabancs, the tourists wondered about their hearts, had longed to pause for the placarded ‘Tea as Mother makes It’, had been unable to catch all the guide’s recital of dates and heights and liberties. To emerge on to the terrace was a reprieve and they scattered, light-headed in the limpid air, clicking their cameras, calling to one another in the accents of Manchester, Bermondsey or Berlin, arms, thighs, sometimes even midriffs naked to the warm sun and the cool gaze of the townspeople who passed through them on their own affairs in sober grey or black, or waited within the caverns of their shops, impersonally sharp.
Along the town side of the terrace the tablecloths at the cafés flapped in the breeze. In the shade of the awnings waiters in white coats teased the dogs that came and went among the tables, gossiping against the radio which poured out music and commercials without pause. The tourists sat in the sun; not many of them, for most were either trudging upward again towards the Cathedral and the castles or were ensnared by the shop windows or by refreshments reassuringly advertised (fish & chips, tea straight from the pot). But Josh Evans sat in the sun on the terrace, his knees comfortably spread, his Italian beach hat on the chair beside him so that he could enjoy the warmth on his head. His short-sleeved shirt, worn outside his trousers and masking his paunch, was open at the neck, showing the skin reddened by the sun, as were his arms. The natural pinkness of his face had tanned already; from behind his sunglasses he watched the people going to and fro, the old women in their shawled black, the girls decent in their jerseys, the young men, black-spectacled, collared and tied; and the macaw-bright, roast-fleshed tourists. He was absolutely content.
So content that not until his wife was almost at the table did he hear her voice, turning with a start and a smile towards it.
‘Ah, here he is,’ she was saying, ‘sitting in the sun as usual. He’s a proper salamander, that’s what he is.’
‘A salamander? Whatever’s a salamander?’ A tall woman walking beside her spoke.
‘A salamander’s what my hubby is, a proper sun-worshipper.’ Her jolly laugh was close in his ear. ‘Stir yourself, Josh, these ladies are joining us. Where will you sit, dear? I’d get in the shade if I was you after that little turn.’
Josh hoisted himself to his feet, pulled chairs, gathered up and rearranged belongings. There were two women with Maisie, a tall young one—well, young to Josh at sixty, in her thirties somewhere—with severe hair and a nice bust, and an old one Maisie had held by the arm, who walked bow-legged as old people do, with white hair wisping under a raffia hat tied on with ribbon, a beach hat, and a beach hat for a young
person at that. Beneath it a small crinkled face pouted and blew, and a gnarled hand pressed against the chest, the other grasping a handbag like a portmanteau.
‘That’s right, you sit down in the shade and take it easy. My word, it’s a climb to the top and no mistake! You knew a thing or two when you chose to stay here, Josh—trust him for that, he’s a real fly one—but I must say it’s a real panorama when you do get there, see for miles. They say you can see right to Yugoslavia on a really clear day, fancy that now, right across the ocean! Now then, Josh, get the waiter.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. Here—camerary!’
‘Him and his Italian! He will try it though I tell him they all understand English. What’s that stuff you’re drinking—coffee? I’ll have a cup of tea.’
The ladies agreed, the order was given. They looked about them, at the passers-by, at the Town Hall’s pinnacles, at each other.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Evans, ‘this is nice. Are you feeling better now?’
The old lady bridled. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I only need to get my breath.’
‘She should never have come,’ said the younger woman, ‘I told her.’
‘I’m independent. I can please myself.’
‘What about pleasing other people for a change? I told you you’d never manage it.’
‘They should have warned us,’ the old lady said sulkily.
‘It’s on a mountain, isn’t it? It’s bound to be steep, if you use your brains.’ She controlled herself, opening her handbag, and began to wipe her face and neck angrily with a handkerchief.
‘It is steep, though,’ said Mrs Evans. ‘Coming up in the coach, I thought we’d never get round some of those corners. That’s one thing I will say for them, they can drive their coaches.’
‘And the motorbikes,’ ventured Josh.
‘Oh, those motorbikes! Tearing about on them at all hours like cowboys!’
‘I like them,’ said the old
lady. ‘They’re modern.’
‘I like a coach,’ said Mrs Evans. ‘There’s something solid about a coach and you can look about you and see the countryside. We wondered if we’d book all the way by coach but in the end we decided we’d come by air and just do the excursions by coach. It’s more of a break that way, and we’d had a little windfall, as a matter of fact, so we decided to be extravagant. Are you ladies with a coach?’
‘We’ve a car.’
The younger one snapped, ‘We’ve hired a taxi. Auntie has to be able to stop somewhere every other minute.’
‘We’re with Footloose Tours,’ continued Mrs Evans smoothly. ‘We’re very satisfied. They look after everything for you but don’t get after you all the time, not like some where you never get a minute’s peace. There’s a nice young chap comes round every evening to see we’re all satisfied.’
‘We’re on our own,’ said the young woman, ‘which means yours truly has to do all the work.’
‘You must let my hubby here do some of it for you. He loves working things out with maps and timetables, don’t you, Boy?’
The waiter brought their tea and a plate of unordered chocolate sweetmeats. Looking warily at her companion from under her raffia brim, the old lady took two and began to eat them quickly.
Her name was Mrs Cynthia Fingal and her niece was Lena Kemp. They were staying in Rimini, while the Evanses were two or three miles up the coast at Salvione, one of the string of holiday places which stretch in an unbroken fringe of concrete, rubble and flowering trees along the edge of the Adriatic sands. Miss Kemp lived in Reading, and, since the death two years ago of a younger aunt, Mrs Fingal had come to live with her. Last year they had gone to Devon for their holiday and had only four sunny days. This year Mrs Fingal had been determined on the sun.
‘And we’ve found it,’ she said, looking out over the terrace sparkling high above its sea of space, ‘I told you, Lena. I’ve been here before
with my husband. I remembered the sun. Just after the war, it was—the Great War, of course. His firm sent him and I came too. Not here, but Milan, just after the Great War. I remembered the sun and the lovely peaches. Lena wouldn’t believe me.’
‘I believed you all right. It’s just that things are different when you get to your age.’
‘We’ve never been before,’ said Mrs Evans. ‘We went to the Costa Brava a few years back, but truth to tell, we haven’t been able to manage a holiday for a while, have we, Josh? We’ve been looking after an old lady, you see, a dear old soul, wasn’t she; Auntie Flo we always called her though she wasn’t any relation really, just an old lady with no one of her own, so Josh and me took her to live with us.’
‘And glad to do it,’ murmured Josh.
‘Yes, well, poor Auntie Flo, she passed on in March, so Josh and me thought we’d like to get away for a bit of a break, give ourselves a little pick-me-up in the sun. We’ve been here four days, and I must say, bar that thunderstorm Tuesday evening, the weather’s been lovely, hasn’t it?’
‘It’s the sun. I remembered it from when my husband and I were in Milan. Just after the Great War, that was, but things don’t change all that much, whatever people say.’
Josh leaned forward and tapped his wife on the arm. ‘Look at the time, Mai.’ They both looked up at the clock beneath the three saints on the Town Hall façade. ‘We’re going to miss that coach if we don’t stir ourselves.’
‘My word, so we are!’ She began to collect cardigan, handbag, scarf.
Miss Kemp said, ‘We could give you a lift back to Rimini if you’d like?’
‘That’s very kind of you, but we’d better stay with the coach. We’ve got our tickets and all, and it takes us right back to our hotel. Perhaps we’ll run into each other again.’
‘That would be nice. It’s nice to have someone of your own sort to talk to.’
‘We thought of going into
Rimini on Saturday, didn’t we, Josh?’
‘We could look you up.’
‘Have a cup of tea somewhere, perhaps?’
‘There’s plenty of places—if you can call it tea, messing about with little bags!’
The Evanses stood up. ‘Why don’t we pick you up at your hotel,’ she said, beaming down at them, the sun making a nimbus of her wiry hair. ‘Say about half past three—you’ll have had your siesta by then.’
‘On Saturday. We’re at the Miramare—it’s right on the main road as you come in from the north, the buses go right past it. The noise!’
‘We’ll find it. That will be nice. My word, we must run!’ She started off down the terrace. Josh raised his hat. ‘Ciao!’ he said and left them smiling.
The Albergo Garibaldi, not quite an hotel but rather more than a pensione, stood on the corner of the road leading from Salvione’s main street down to the beach. It had been built only two years before and it would be hard to say whether the cracks and crumblings of its structure were signs of incompletion or premature decay. Small trees, coated in the white dust of Salvione’s side roads, had been left in a shivering fringe around it, and their shade, and huge dry pots of lilies and geraniums, made the verandah fronting the main road a pleasant place when the sun was too hot for the beach. ...
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