The Marshal at the Villa Torrini Read online

  '"Suicide?"

  '"Yes.."

  '"That's what you're afraid of?"

  'She nodded. "But I don't want it. Believe me."

  ' "I do believe you, child. Will you pray with me for a moment?"

  ' "I can't, not in words."

  ' "Well, well. Your being here is a prayer in itself, isn't it? Did you pray as a child?"

  ' "With my father, when I was very small."

  ' "And what prayer did you say together? Do you remember one after all these years?"

  '"Only one. Out of the depths . . . have I cried to Thee . . ."

  ' "The De profundis?" It seemed a strange choice for a young child. "It's very beautiful. A penitential psalm. Will we say it together now?"

  ' "I can't remember very much . . . "

  '"Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord:

  'Lord, hear my voice.

  'Let Thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.

  'If Thou, O Lord, shall observe iniquities, Lord, who shall endure it?

  'For with Thee there is merciful forgiveness and by reason of Thy law I have waited for Thee, O Lord.

  'My soul hath relied on his word: my soul hath hoped in the Lord.

  'From the morning watch even until night let Israel hope in the Lord.

  'For with the Lord there is mercy and with him plentiful redemption.

  'And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities."

  'As I finished the prayer I saw that she had begun to breathe properly and her colour was slightly better.

  '"I hadn't forgotten it. I thought I had, but I remembered each phrase as you said it. Thank you. He was such a good man, my father. Do you think it really means anything, the phrase they always use—while the balance of his mind was disturbed?"

  'She told me then, and I understood what she was afraid of. She was afraid of grief, of unbearable grief of the sort that had ended in her father's suicide. She told me all about her mother's illness—she'd have been no more than eight or nine years old herself then—a terrible form of cancer which disfigured her face so that near the end she refused to let the child see her.

  ' "She didn't want to frighten me. She didn't want to be remembered like that."

  'She knew, as children do know things, that her father had somehow helped her mother to die.

  ' "Did I listen to those whispered conversations between him and his sister? I can't honestly remember. I never saw the morphine suppositories that the nurse left each day and yet I was aware of their presence and the feeling of dread that they provoked, a cold sick panic in my stomach."

  'Her father had outlived his wife by less than a year.

  ' "He did it with sleeping pills. They say that's a woman's suicide but he put a plastic bag over his head to make sure."

  'She was too young to help him, too young to talk to him, but sensitive enough to feel inadequate and to take the blame.

  '"It wasn't just because he missed her, I'm sure of that. He must have been lonely, but the horror of her illness coupled with his guilt about the morphine . . . Oh, I don't blame him in any way, not now."

  ' "But you blame yourself?"

  ' "I couldn't help him. I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't important enough."

  ' "You were only a child."

  '"It doesn't matter! Age has nothing to do with it. I didn't help him. Do you know, everything I do, every book I publish, every good review, every success, it's all to make it up to him, to console him, to give him something to live for—only he's dead. What sense does it make? I've never told anyone this before, and maybe I didn't even know it until just now when I said it. I think that's why I don't like living in England where I might think about it."

  '"But something provoked you into thinking about it. Your own grief which makes you fear suicide, which you think might overwhelm you?"

  '"Yes, that . . . Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice—but he didn't! My father was a good man."

  ' "But you're very angry with him, is that not so?"

  ' "Angry?"

  '"He deserted you. It doesn't seem to me that you've forgiven him. Now you're angry with me, are you not? But suicide is a very big sin for such a small child to forgive. Perhaps you should have left it to God."

  ' "Aren't we meant to forgive each other?"

  ' "Oh yes, but we're such amateurs, don't you think? And God's a professional—ah, you can smile, then? I'm glad of that. Wait, now, while I switch on this lamp, that's a sad little light bulb up there and I can hardly see you."

  'I had to see her. After all, she was only telling me of things that happened many years ago. Important things but not the things that had brought her into an empty cathedral on Christmas Eve. I watched her face as I spoke.

  ' "Christmas can be such a difficult time. For the poor, for the lonely, for the newly bereaved."

  'She didn't answer but she closed her eyes for a moment and she was surely close to tears again.

  ' "It's very tiring to talk of things which affect us deeply. Perhaps you should go home now. I'm always ready to listen if you want to come and talk again."

  'She shook her head.

  ' "I did forgive him! How could I not forgive him when he went through so much? And I swore I'd never let anyone I loved down again, never desert them in their hour of need! But it doesn't work, and I don't know what more I can do!"

  ' "No, indeed. You're doing a great deal too much and all to comfort yourself. You were the one deserted, poor creature, abandoned in your hour of need. And aren't you manipulating others to ease your own pain?"

  'I wonder now was I too cruel, too sudden—but, of course, I was thinking I might never see her again, as indeed I didn't. She was an intelligent woman, too, otherwise I wouldn't have taken such a risk. It's such a common problem, Marshal, don't you think, the way we console ourselves through others? Most people use their children, have you noticed that ever? Do you have children yourself?'

  'Two boys.' The Marshal felt a faint wave of apprehension, an anticipation of some unacknowledged guilt.

  'Two little boys.' The priest's eyes gleamed, not with accusation but with kindliness. 'They must have been hard times when you were young in Sicily, as they were when I was young in Ireland.'

  'They were.' His tone was defensive.

  'And you must get a great deal of pleasure out of giving them all the things you once lacked.'

  The Marshal thought of their skiing holiday, and a number of little luxuries which he knew he shouldn't have given in to, but which he'd been proud to be able to afford. Did he spoil them?

  'You spoil them a little. It's a small selfishness, Marshal, but because of it they won't have your strength of character.'

  'It's hard to refuse them what you can afford to give them.'

  'True. It's very hard—and then, if we did, they might well misunderstand and resent it. There's no simple answer. In any case, that Christmas Eve I took the risk of at least posing the problem and she understood me, I'm quite sure of that. Now, when I heard you were investigating her death, I felt at once that I should talk to you. I felt as sure as human fallibility allows, that she didn't commit suicide, that whatever her problem was, she left here more clear in her mind and with a crisis behind her. It also occurred to me, though I'm trespassing here on your territory perhaps, that someone who knew how close she'd come to the idea of suicide . . . Well, perhaps I shouldn't take the liberty . . .'

  'Might have tried to make it look that way?'

  'I suppose something of the sort, yes. But, of course, I don't know all the circumstances of her death.'

  'No one does.' The Marshal frowned. 'There's certainly no evidence to suggest suicide. On the other hand, unless I can find out what happened at Christmas . . .'

  'True. But, as I said, Christmas tends to bring things to the surface, precipitate a crisis. It could have been going on for some time, this problem.'

  'Yes . . . ' The Marshal toyed with the idea of tellin
g him about the Mary Mancini business. He wouldn't take too kindly to the idea, probably. She seemed to be one of his best parishioners and, in any case, it looked as though the story was untrue. He decided to be vague.

  'It could be there was some other women—Forbes told me so himself, her husband—and it may well be that he told her about it at Christmas.'

  The old priest didn't speak for a moment or two. He looked down at the tiny glass and turned it slowly between his dry fingers. 'Yes, well . . . that's something that would cause very great distress, of course . . .'

  'But not so much distress as she was feeling?'

  'I'm sure that wasn't it. No, no. No, Marshal, that wasn't it at all. Do you remember that she told me she felt ashamed? But it wasn't she who had strayed because she had nothing, she felt, to confess. No, it was something worse than that. Seeing how exhausted she was, I gathered her parcels together and helped her up.

  'Walking back down the aisle of the cathedral I could sense her reluctance to face the world outside.- She was dragging her steps. The organist had begun practising for midnight mass, playing something, I don't remember now just what, from The Messiah, and it brought a phrase to my mind—you'll remember it—A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. . .'

  'Celia, God rest her soul, was acquainted with grief. But it was her daughter, Marshal, who was at the root of it. In fact, until I spoke of it to Mary Price Mancini this morning, I remained under the impression that the child was dead, perhaps drugs, something of that nature.

  'We reached the doors at last and I tried to give her the parcels. She broke down again. She couldn't, bear to touch them—that was why I thought the child was dead, you see.

  '"I bought her everything . . . I bought—things she wanted, everything I could think of that she—Oh God, I don't want to go home!"

  'She pulled herself together as best she could but she wouldn't touch the parcels. She insisted I kept them and gave them to any parishioners I thought had need of some Christmas cheer. She tried to laugh, as though she were trying to ridicule herself. "I even bought a tree . . . " But she was weeping. The last thing she said was, "I want my little girl! Anything else I could bear but not this. I want my little girl!"

  'She pushed her way out of the side door and it swung to behind her. I followed as best I could on my rheumatic legs, but when I came out to the top of the cathedral steps she had disappeared among the crowd of Christmas shoppers. There it all was, the bustle and cheerfulness, the dark afternoon glittering with Christmas lights, and somewhere among all this a good woman whose name I didn't know, and whose heart was acquainted with grief.

  'We can do so little for each other, Marshal, so very little. Well, well, I prayed with her that Christmas Eve and tonight I'll pray beside her. She won't be alone. That's why I asked you to come to me here, though it was a hard thing to drag you out on such a night.'

  'No, no . . . ' the Marshal said, standing up stiffly in the cold little room. 'No, you did quite right.'

  CHAPTER 8

  'Eternal rest give unto her, O Lord,

  'And let perpetual light shine upon her.

  'May she rest in peace.'

  The Marshal slipped out quietly and waited near the door, sheltering himself as best he could from the freezing wind. He watched as Forbes followed the coffin out. He wore some sort of darkish suit, though it wasn't black and neither was his tie. The daughter walked out beside him and he got his first look at her face. She was pretty. Very delicate and fragile-looking, rather fairer than her mother. She wasn't dressed in black either, but wore a heavy, dark bluish sort of coat. She glanced at the Marshal, not so much by accident, he thought, but as though she were seeking him out. He was surprised by the darkness of her eyes which you would have expected to be blue with such light hair. She had pink lipstick on. She looked, thought the Marshal, though he didn't consider himself much of an expert, very pretty indeed. When they started loading the coffin into the hearse, she faltered and made as if to support herself on Forbes's arm, but he anticipated her movement and slid sideways away from her. Mary Mancini moved forward quickly and took the girl's arm, steering her gently into the car behind. Forbes got in at the other side but it was evident that this was only because there was the one hired funeral car available, everyone else having their own transport. He sat close to the far window, looking out, and never once had he acknowledged the Marshal's presence. Even so, he might have had eyes in the back of his head, so strong was the Marshal's impression that he was aware of no one else.

  'Shall we go?' Mary Mancini was beside the Marshal. She spoke in a whisper. She'd told him earlier that she didn't intend to go to the cemetery because her youngest child would be home from school before they got away if she did.

  The funeral cortege departed and they crossed the road behind it.

  'Is that your car and driver? We might as well go on foot, you know. We're just across the bridge here and it's bound to be quicker.'

  The Marshal was frozen to the marrow but could hardly contradict her. He paused to instruct Fara and then they set out across the bridge. It was difficult enough to breathe in the face of such a wind but Mary Mancini seemed to find it stimulated conversation.

  'He's a good-looking boy, isn't he?'

  'I'm sorry . . . ?'

  'Your driver. He looks very bright, too, and he obviously worships you!'

  A remark like that, plus the wind, deprived the Marshal of speech and they crossed the bridge in silence.

  'Left here. Don't you just love the tramontana? I always think of it as a sort of spring cleaning. The Arno valley's so stagnant as a rule, it's like breathing armpit. This is just what we need.' She held up her face and breathed in the icy air with delight. 'Of course, what we don't want is a lump of exquisite renaissance architecture thundering down on our heads.' A remark inspired by the presence of the fire brigade who had closed the street they were trying to enter in the hope of preventing just that contingency. 'We can cut through here.'

  Her street was a quiet backwater where the ground floor shops were occupied almost entirely by artisans. Today, apart from a prevailing smell of glue and varnish, they weren't much in evidence, their doors shut fast against the wind so that the usual sounds of sawing and sewing and the music from their radios were barely audible. There was just one shop, a grocer's, and Mary Mancini looked in there to ask, 'Any post for us?'

  'There is something . . . Just a minute, there's a parcel somewhere—Luigi! Where's that parcel for Signora Mancini?'

  'Back of the sheer and there's a letter as well.'

  The parcel and letter were run to earth but not before the grocer's wife had taken in the presence of the Marshal whom she recognized, though she didn't know him to speak to.

  'We've insured ourselves, you know,' she said, speaking to him now.

  'Insured . . . ?'

  'The faade. Of course, we're the ones most at risk what with people in and out of the shop all day. I said to Signora Mancini, we'll be the ones to get sued, and they can't start work on it before June—I said to them, there's lumps of cement the size of a Parmesan cheese coming down. You get hit by one of those and that's it. But we're covered, my husband'll tell you about the policy—Luigi!'

  'No, no, you don't need to call Luigi.' It was Mary Mancini who rescued the Marshal, breaking off from examining her parcel. 'The Marshal's come to talk to me about that friend of mine they buried this morning.'

  'Oh . . . Not the one who—'

  'That's right. But he's in a hurry now so we'll be going up.'

  It wasn't that easy. The Marshal, accustomed to this sort of thing, didn't think for a minute that it would be. There was some discussion about the parcel which hadn't had to be signed for but of course if it had been necessary to sign for it they would have signed for it, if that was all right with the signora, only these days you never know and you don't want to go signing things that people wouldn't have wanted to sign if they'd known—of course, in this case it hadn't had to be signed
for, at least she didn't think it had, but it was Luigi who took the post this morning because she was serving, but she was pretty sure he'd said he hadn't needed to—Luigi!

  'Sorry,' Mary Mancini said when at last they got out, 'but everybody likes a bit of attention and I'm so often out when the post comes—besides, it's an old habit and they'd be offended if I told the postman to ring. He wouldn't get in anyway with this wretched door.'

  She rang the bell beside the gigantic oak doors and stood back to look up. After a moment a long-haired girl opened a window two floors up, looked down at them and vanished.

  'Hers is the only key that will work at the moment. Won't be a minute . . .'

  The girl reappeared above them and launched a huge iron key which Mary caught deftly.

  'Practice, you know.'

  The door didn't open easily even then and when it did the Marshal had to help her heave it inwards until it began to swing under its own weight. Finding himself in almost complete darkness, the Marshal took off his glasses.

  It must have been a fairly elegant house once. The staircase was broad and the high ceiling of the ground-floor area was supported by stone pillars. But there were bicycles and mopeds piled everywhere, the walls were pitted, and the usual background smell of mediæval drains was heavily overlain with a sweet and cloying scent like vanilla.

  'Do be careful,' Mary warned him, 'we can't get the condominium to splurge on anything bigger than a five watt light-bulb—the smell comes from the ground floor back, by the way. They make cakes for the bars. It's a bit sickly but I suppose we hardly notice it after twenty years. Come in.'

  'Thank you. It's nice and warm in here.' It was very untidy too but in a cheerful way that told of a lot of family activity and too little time to tidy it all up.

  'Excuse the mess. It only seems warm because you're so cold. It's a difficult house to heat. We'll stay in the kitchen where it's warmest and I'll make us a hot drink. Take your coat off.'

  The kitchen had a window giving on to the garden of the convent in the next street. The top of a huge evergreen tree was swaying frantically in the wind but the sun coming through the glass made the room as warm as toast.