The Marshal's Own Case (4 page)

‘You can’t get in touch with her before then?’

‘Not really. She’s a jazz singer—that’s how we met— and she’s touring round with some group. There’s no phone here so she can’t ring me. I’m sorry not to be much help.’

‘That’s all right. I’ll leave you to your practising. Just in case she does turn up here’s a card with my number— you don’t know where she comes from, this Mirella?’

‘Sicily, I think.’

‘Then you may be right. Luciano’s from Syracuse; so they might know each other.’ The Marshal went to the door.

‘Any time you’re passing.’

He hadn’t closed the door behind him before the music had started up again but when he was going down the stairs it stopped and the young man called after him.

‘Hey! you don’t happen to know of an empty flat by any chance?’

‘No.’

‘OK. Just thought I’d ask. You never know!’

And the cheery notes of the saxophone followed the Marshal down the narrow street. Well, he’d done what he could.

Back in his office there was a message from his commanding officer and he was looking at it thoughtfully when Lorenzini knocked and looked in.

‘Your wife . . .’

‘Salva!’ Teresa pushed in, dressed for the street. ‘Surely you haven’t forgotten? We’ve to go to the school! We’ll look well being late when it’s only across the road. Go and get changed, for heaven’s sake!’

It was, as Teresa had said, only across the road. The Nic-colò Macchiavelli Middle School was housed in one of the palaces facing the Pitti. But when they climbed the broad stone staircase they found long queues outside every classroom and a crowd of parents around a list on the wall telling them where to find the teachers they had to see. It was Teresa who pushed her way through and copied down the room numbers on a bit of paper. She seemed to know all the other parents and had something to say to them all. The Marshal stood on one leg and then the other and waited.

‘Right,’ she said, pushing her way out and consulting her list, ‘the main thing is to see Totò’s class teacher. You go and queue outside Room No. 5 while I try and see some of the others, but don’t go in without me. Giovanni’s having trouble with maths as usual, so I think I should queue there first . . .’

The Marshal waited outside room No. 5. He recognized some of his neighbours but only a few of them noticed him or recognized him without his uniform. After twenty minutes had gone by and he had edged forward less than a yard, he began to wish he hadn’t put an overcoat on. It was only a light one but he was too hot, even so, and embarrassed to take it off. He hardly ever came to the school, and when he did, the minute he got inside he felt like a pupil again and started worrying about his own behaviour instead of his children’s. Just the smell of the place was enough to make him feel eleven years old and teachers half his age could make him feel inadequate. Maybe people who’d been clever at school didn’t feel like that. The tall woman with glasses who seemed to be canvassing the parents in all the queues over some issue or other obviously didn’t feel the way he did.

‘If we don’t get any satisfaction from the director of the school I’m prepared to take it further . . .’

It was bad enough facing the teachers, never mind the director whom the Marshal had never even seen!

‘There must be a gymnasium nearer than that. By half past twelve the children are hungry and a twenty-minute walk through the crowds in the centre to get to a PE lesson is ridiculous. It’s no wonder some of them are skipping off. And when you think of all those acres of green right across from here behind the Pitti Palace and nowhere where the children can so much as play with a ball . . .’

That was true enough. Even so, he wouldn’t have the nerve . . . She was probably always top of the class at school. Most of the parents were as meek as himself, he noticed, though they agreed with everything the woman in the glasses had to say. He’d never done more than just scrape through in any subject. Not that he’d suffered much from it, since nobody expected more of him. It was after a parents’ night like this—he must have been about nine—that his mother had come home and said, ‘They’re all sure you could do just a little better if you’d only try and concentrate. You always seem to be in a dream, or else you’re thinking about something else.’ She hadn’t been angry. He knew that she would have liked him to be clever enough to enter a seminary but she never took it out on him when she realized he’d never manage it. She used to say, ‘As long as you’ve got your health . . .’ He tried to remember whether he’d deliberately got poor marks because he didn’t want to be sent to a seminary but he couldn’t recall having any feelings about it one way or another. He edged forward a little as a mother came out of the classroom and another went in. Funny thing, that, about memory. Some things from your childhood, the smell of things, and certain children, stuck in your mind as clear as day but never the reason why you did things. That woman was getting nearer. She was trying to make everybody sign something and he hoped she wouldn’t ask him because he wasn’t at all clear about what exactly her complaint was—which just went to show that his teachers were right about him! He seemed to be quite near the front of the queue all of a sudden and he hoped Teresa would turn up soon.

‘If the parents of all the children concerned sign . . .’

Thank goodness she didn’t ask him. She asked the tiny, silent woman standing almost beside him and must have thought he was her husband. He sighed and shifted his weight and wondered where he would be at this minute if his mother had got her way about the seminary. She’d been happy enough when he’d joined up, though, knowing it was a safe, respectable career. He’d never confessed to anybody, not even Teresa, that he really wanted to be an artisan. He was still fascinated by people who had the skill to make beautiful things. He didn’t tell because he was conscious of having clumsy hands that were too big and people would only have laughed. He stuffed them in his pockets automatically now as soon as he thought of it.

‘Salva! Why ever don’t you take your overcoat off, your face is as red as a beetroot.’

Teresa was carrying hers over her arm. He went so far as to unbutton his but that was all.

‘How did it go?’

‘All right. I managed to see his maths teacher and his class teacher. If we don’t get to all the others I don’t think it will matter too much. If he can get his maths up to scratch he’ll get through. They always say the same about Giovanni, that he’s well-behaved and quiet and does his best. It’s Totò I’m worried about.’

And so was his teacher when they finally got in there and sat in front of her desk, gazing at her with big worried eyes like two nervous children. She was young and quite friendly, which was a help, but, even so, it seemed that things were going badly for their younger boy.

‘It’s early in the year, I know, but it’s not as though he has such a good record that we can afford to wait and hope he’ll settle down later on.’

‘He’s never been as easy as his brother,’ offered Teresa, ‘but he’s not a bad child, he’s just so lively. He can be a bit of a handful.’

‘Yes . . .’ The young teacher looked doubtful. She hadn’t yet made any specific complaint and she seemed reluctant to broach the real problem. ‘It’s just that—it’s not only his work . . .’

‘How do you mean?’ Teresa asked.

‘I’m afraid he’s got in with a bad crowd. That’s why I rang to ask you both to come. I thought perhaps . . .’ Her glance moved from Teresa to the silent Marshal whose big hands were placed squarely on his knees. ‘There’s a small group of boys in the class who are constantly in trouble in one way or another. They’re all from fairly rough families and it’s only to be expected that they’re the way they are. The trouble is that your son’s attached himself to them and since he’s so obviously not really one of them, he’s being led like a sheep and has to go out of his way to prove that he can behave worse than they do. It’s the sort of thing that happens fairly often with well-brought-up children who want to be thought one of the lads. But in this case . . . well, they have been known to get in trouble out of school. I just thought it’s the sort of thing that could cause you a lot of embarrassment, apart from anything else.’ Again, she looked at the Marshal.

‘What sort of trouble?’ he asked.

‘Oh, nothing too serious. There have been one or two complaints from the shops here in the square, for example. They go round them all asking for stickers, you know the sort I mean, the little coloured trademark stickers you see on shop windows and doors. They collect them. As I said, it’s nothing serious, but some of the smarter shops don’t want children of that sort running in and out. I’m not suggesting you take that in itself too seriously, but I do think we should try and find out why he’s taken up with these boys at all. It’s not like him and I do feel it’s a sign that there’s something wrong. I suppose he never brings any of them home?’

‘No, never,’ Teresa said. ‘Giovanni sometimes has a friend in after lunch. They do their homework together, but not Totò.’

‘I thought not. They’re not the sort he’d want you to see. Does he go out much himself?’

‘He does sometimes go out but he always says he’s going to Leonardo’s house to do homework with him. There seemed no harm in that. He did the same all last year, so I never thought . . .’

‘But he doesn’t bring Leonardo home with him any more?’

‘He doesn’t, it’s true . . .’

‘I thought not. He never bothers with Leonardo any more. I think you should find out where he’s really going and perhaps even keep him in—it’s a difficult decision to make because setting yourselves against the friends he’s chosen can have a negative effect. Nevertheless, the fact that he never brings these boys home or even mentions them to you means that he must be ashamed of his association with them. I don’t want to worry you too much but I do think we should find out what’s wrong, why he’s doing it. It’s out of character and I’m afraid he must be very unhappy for some reason. I thought you might have noticed at home . . .’

The two of them sat silent, trying to remember anything different about Totò, but they couldn’t. Both their faces were a little red. It wasn’t comfortable to be told something about your own child that you were completely unaware of. They felt crushed. And yet, the Marshal thought, why was it that parents were always taken by surprise like this? He’d done any number of things himself that would have horrified his mother if she’d ever found out, but she hadn’t. So why was it so impossible to believe that Totò did things they knew nothing about?

‘We’d better have a talk to him,’ Teresa said, recovering herself first.

‘If you don’t mind my offering advice,’ the young teacher said gently, ‘I wouldn’t come down too heavily on him. It could make him worse. I don’t know whether it wouldn’t be better to avoid mentioning those boys at all. You could just keep him in on the grounds that he’s behind with his work and needs to study more. That’s certainly true. And we should keep in touch. Watch him, and try to find out what’s making him unhappy and causing all this.’ She glanced at the door where the next parents in the queue were peering in, wondering what was taking so long.

The Marshal stood up. Teresa seemed rooted to the spot, reluctant to leave without having solved anything, without even understanding. Nevertheless, she stirred herself when she saw him standing. They thanked the teacher and left.

They crossed the road and walked up the sloping forecourt towards the Pitti Palace in silence. Only when his wife was unlocking the door of their quarters did the Marshal murmur, ‘Should I talk to him?’

‘I don’t know. It might make it seem too serious. After all . . .’

They went in without her finishing the sentence, she didn’t need to. She was always the one to deal with discipline, and her threats of ‘if I have to tell your father you’ll get a hiding’ never came to anything.

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘We’ll have supper first, anyway.’

It wasn’t a happy meal. Nobody spoke except to ask for the salt or be offered a second helping. The Marshal ate without knowing what he was eating. You did everything you were supposed to do for your children, worked for them, fed them, clothed them, sent for the doctor when they were ill, and all the time they weren’t really just ‘the children’ they were people, quite separate from yourself. He knew it was ridiculous but he felt as if Totò had given him a kick in the stomach and instead of feeling concerned he felt hurt. It was just as well that Teresa was going to deal with it. Maybe mothers felt things in a different way. That woman, whose name he’d by now forgotten, who came to report her son missing and he was forty-five years old . . . ‘We’ve always been close.’ Did it never wear off then, this feeling that your children were just your children and not people? Not even when they grew up?

‘Do you want anything else, Salva?’

‘No.’

‘In that case, I’ll clear away.’ She gave him a significant look and indicated Giovanni.

The two boys made to go off to their room and he was so slow on the uptake that it was Teresa who had to say, ‘Giovanni, stay with your dad a minute, he wants a word with you.’

Totò shot off to the bedroom and Teresa cleared the table and then followed him.

‘What is it?’ Giovanni asked, puzzled at seeing his father turn on the television and sit down in front of it.

‘What?’

‘Mum said you wanted to talk to me.’

‘Mm.’ He got up again and turned the sound down. ‘Sit here with me.’ After all, Giovanni might know what was wrong, even if they didn’t.

‘I’m not in trouble at school, am I? The maths teacher said—’

‘No, no . . . You’re not in trouble . . .’ It didn’t seem right to talk about Totò behind his back but, after all, Giovanni spent more time with him than anybody else. He might know what was the matter.

‘It’s Totò we’re worried about. His teacher thinks . . . She says he’s got in with a bad crowd. Do you know who they are?’

‘I know one of them, the one called Innocenti. I don’t know his first name. He has a gang.’

‘And is Totò in this gang?’

‘I don’t know . . . maybe.’