Patricia and Malise (6 page)

Voices on the stairs. A child counting, crossly and in Italian – sixty-five, sixty-seven and so on. Slow and begrudging. Father encouraging. Mother encouraging. Greetings. Flourishes with canapés. Unnecessary flourishes – even Malise was awake to the fact that he overdid it.

They were all in his small sitting room. White paint. Necessities in the way of furnishing. Considering it was summer, it was chilly.

Antonio was small, dark, wiry, polite and very quiet. Patricia disconcertingly alert. More beautiful than before. Her presence unnerved Malise who gave full attention to the husband. He, like his son, was small, wiry and polite.

All went well at table – the sizzling and serving. Conversation on the sticky side but many exclamations (especially from Antonio) on the standard of the food.

Malise tried jokes – mostly about language differences – and whirled the plates to and fro to a sink, refusing all offers of help.

The only trouble was that the meal was over almost before it began. Even the ice cream was finished and the evening still very young.

Were they all going to leave by eight fifteen?

Andrea took charge and quizzed Malise about his life, his work and his reasons for living where he did. Patricia pulled a pack of cards from her bag and set up a game with her son.

Andrea began to enjoy the other's company. Malise was well educated, had learnt much about
Lucchese
brickwork. His looks were indisputably extraordinary. He managed to hint at patrician forebears. He used the word patrician in the hope that Patricia might look up from the card game – which she did.

The Mc Hips, (that was the surname, he said, modestly) were members of an ancient clan. He knew much Scottish history and Andrea found it absorbing. Wishing to sound involved in the history of Lucca, Malise embarked on another topic. ‘I have heard the story of your courageous chief of police during the war. I gather he defied Mussolini and lost his life for it.'

Andrea smiled and looked serious. ‘Indeed. He is a hero in particular for my family. He saved the lives of our Jewish community. Many of my relatives were rescued as a result of his brave actions. My parents, my brother and I were fortunate enough to survive in Genoa where we went to live. Our name was Levi so, we had of course, to change it. It was hard for us, as children, to remember always that our surname was now Leri. My mother made us each say it about a hundred times a morning in order to get it into our heads. Leri. Leri. Leri. I remember it clearly to this day. We were very fortunate but it wasn't easy. Much time hiding. I have always stayed with that name'

Malise emptied Andrea's ashtrays rather too frequently for the demands of hospitality and digested the unsettling fact that Patricia's husband was one from another race.

After giving the child a little talk about the church bells, he promised Antonio a demonstration with the basket and the winch – popping in the joke book and telling the boy that it was to wait for him downstairs – that it was a present to be taken home – together they reeled it down to the piazza below where it ended up beside Ruggles.

Patricia took that as a sign for them to leave. The evening was over. They thanked him and said goodbye.

‘Maybe' Patricia smiled, ‘Maybe you will visit us one evening. I can see that Andrea liked talking to you.'

Andrea endorsed it and, quite suddenly, asked Malise if he might be prepared to give the odd English lesson – both to him and to the boy. ‘Antonio's English is good but not perfect. Patricia speaks Italian so well that we are lazy sometimes.'

There stood a chink of a link. Not that he had anticipated having to teach – but something, surely, promised. He had their address. That and their telephone number was provided by the husband.

Malise rolled up his sleeves and washed the hard, white plates; meticulously preserving remains of comestibles. He threw open windows to expel the stink of cigarettes. Sacrilege. Husband of Patricia to chain-smoke.

English lessons.

He had not reckoned on that.

In the morning he planned to buy phrase books. Grammar. Andrea would discover how capable he was.

He was to bind his way into the family. A sort of tutor. Did tutors not, notoriously, work their ways into the beds of ladies of houses?

Certainly not a Mc Hip, but Patricia had, he told from instinct, several drops of blue blood in her. Why had she married a foreign academic? Stately homes had, surely, been open to her. Her effect on him was terrifying. It caused in him a transient feeling of faintness which came and went by the second.

He decided to let a few days pass before arranging the first lesson. Either with husband or son. The father would be the easier of the two since he wished for a lesson and the son had not looked enlivened when it had been suggested.

As soon as things were shipshape, he made for a
cartolleria
. All text books were, naturally, in Italian but he was unlikely to have trouble in reversing the structure.

Lessons were to be meticulously prepared. He still kept an eye open for signs of Patricia on her bicycle as he scoured the town for folders and suitable stationery. Notebooks and so on. Never before had he spent money at this speed. Never before had he fallen in love and he believed it was never to happen again in his lifetime. The iron was not hot but he had to strike.

No sign of her during that or several subsequent days. Eventually he dialed the number given to him by Andrea.

Patricia, in the loveliest and most luscious of voices, answered in Italian. ‘Pronto.'

‘Tutor here!' He shouted it out.

‘Gosh. Yes. Andrea was a bit hopeful actually. He's terrifically busy and most often in Pisa. Thank you, though, for a great evening. You really are a master chef.'

Was that it? Was he only a chef? Were lessons no longer needed? Much spent on exercise books.

Silence. He broke it.

‘What about Antonio? Might he like a modicum of tuition?' His voice grew louder still and his language more archaic.

Before the end of the conversation, however, something was arranged.

Antonio's long summer vacation had just started. Andrea spent much time in Pisa and they did not expect to go to the hills for a bit of time yet. Might Malise meet the boy in the town? Talk to him in English?
Conversazione
?

Was he about to become a child minder?

Trail a grumpy child around Lucca for hours at a time?

Unpaid, of course. To be paid by Patricia was unthinkable. He was terrified that she might suggest it. She didn't and they agreed to meet outside the cathedral on the following morning. There she was, tantalisingly so, to hand the boy over and to leave them to each other for an hour or more.

It was very warm. Malise, tugging at every stop within him, was determined to amuse and interest the child.

He wore, after consideration, an old linen jacket, a blue cotton shirt and army surplus trousers.

It amused him to allow the child to balance himself as he ran along a low wall that bordered a narrow canal near to the centre of the town. He bought him a multi-coloured ice cream; introduced him to the shrivelled remains of the patron saint of serving maids – having mugged up on her fanciful story. She had, he related with exaggeration in voice and manner, been stalked by an ogre (here he pretended to be an ogre) who suspected her of stealing food from his kitchen. On his orders she let fall her gathered apron and out fell a bunch of flowers. The city was brimming with myth and sensation and Malise had done all in his power to plan the walk with precision. Army surplus trousers and all. They stopped outside the orthopedic shop. An entire window was dense with dummies wearing jockstraps designed for hernia sufferers, built-up shoes, false breasts and crepe stockings under a flickering sign
‘
Busti
e
Corsetti
Orto
pidici
.'

Antonio was entranced by it all. Wide-eyed.

When they met Patricia at the bar where, once only, she had fallen from her bicycle, she was happy to find her son animated and asking if ‘Sir' might take him walking every day. Malise, too, had enjoyed it. There was something of the schoolmaster in his make-up and, if it constituted progress towards his goal, he was more than prepared to escort the boy as often as was necessary.

He suggested that they all stop for a drink or a cup of coffee. Patricia accepted and the boy demanded another ice-cream. Malise, unmanned (or possibly the opposite) in Patricia's dazzling presence, became daring.

‘Tomorrow. Why don't you join us on our round?'

She seemed surprised and pleased but refused the offer. It was clear that she delighted in her new found free time.

What did she need free time for?

Her husband was in Pisa.

The following day they repeated the ritual and, after another successful morning where the two climbed the tall tower with trees on top, they met again with Patricia at the bar. Some ice had been broken. The nine year old was much taken with Malise. The man had nothing whatsoever to do. That made a change with grown-ups who were busy from morning until night.

‘Sir' was prepared to shop, change routes, allow Antonio to stroke a dog, put a lire or two into the bowl of a beggar. He became a Galahad in the child's eyes.

For several days they kept to the same routine – joining Patricia for a drink in the Piazza when the touring round was over. They boy was attentive to Malise who, flaunting boyish suppleness, showed him how to make paper aeroplanes and raced him round the ramparts. Patricia beamed upon him, her sparkling eyes looking into his.

‘What luck that we met. Antonio has seldom enjoyed himself more. Andrea and I are both so busy.'

‘What makes you busy?'

He had her attention. Never, ever had he been close to such loveliness.

She said ‘I work at the art school. Only part time. Otherwise I paint.'

Her lips were thick and full. Her son put his arms around her and kissed both her cheeks. Lucky boy.

At the start of the enterprise Andrea had suggested that his son call Malise ‘Sir.'

On that day Antonio, after kissing his mother, leaned towards Malise and said ‘Sir. Why do you not come with us to our holiday house?' Patricia smiled. Malise lived in purgatory as he waited for her reaction.

‘That's a nice idea darling.' – talking to her boy – ‘but you know we can't have guests there.' She turned to Malise and smiled again – yet more warmly.

‘We do have a little holiday house up in the Pisan hills. Not far from here. It's heaven but not fit for visitors.'

She went on, still smiling, to explain that it was really barely more than a ruin. No plumbing, no electricity, a cooker with need of a gas bombola. Just a small beauty spot with a stream. A wood. Kingfishers, wild boar, flowers, birds, bats and red squirrels. Cuckoos sang in spring and summer.

It was one o'clock and Malise suggested ‘a spot of lunch in a
trattoria
perhaps?'

‘Yes. Si. Si' Antonio was overjoyed.

At lunch in a dark
trattoria
, as Antonio tucked in to a heap of spaghetti, Patricia told Malise more. They each drank a glass of pale white wine. Pale, almost, as water.

After lunch, Malise suggested they walk (Patricia leaving her bicycle where it was parked) to the
piazza
below his apartment. He wanted Antonio to see his car for it had been half-hidden behind a van on the evening when he had visited with his parents.

‘He's called ‘Ruggles' Malise explained as the boy fingered dark blue body work and asked for a ride.

‘Another time' he said. Good idea to ration out treats.

‘The key is up all those stairs and I, for one, have had enough walking for today, my lad.'

‘Why is he called ‘Ruggles'?'

Malise looked mysteriously at Patricia and said ‘Thereby hangs a tale.'

He found it fitting that she suspect he had some sort of a past.

Antonio, entranced, wheeled towards his mother.

‘Why can't Sir drive it to the
Casetta
? It can stay at the bottom of the hill where Papa leaves his car.'

Ruggles was muscelling in on the act. Bringing good fortune.

‘Young man. Tell me where to find you and I'll call by – ready with my hammock. Do you have a tree or two?'

‘Lots and lots and lots of trees.'

Fortunate he had thought to buy a hammock before setting out on his travels.

By the time they parted, Malise had set out a scheme whereby, sometime during the family's holiday in the hills, he would pay them a visit in ‘Ruggles' – and looked forward to roping his hammock between two of their trees.

He was not certain if Patricia entirely approved of the idea but Antonio was adamant.

They were gone but, in a very few days, he planned to follow them. He planned, too, that the boy should call him ‘Captain.' After all, he was one. It didn't sound very glamorous in England but, in Italy – ‘Capitano.'

A visit to the public post office was horribly overdue and Malise walked there grudgingly, but at a smart pace.

Sure enough a large and floppy envelope had waited there for many weeks. The letter came from Christian and was written on lined paper.

‘Dear Malise. I write to ask after you (and Ruggles, too, of course)

Daddy and Alyson were pleased with your cards but not much the wiser. Not too good here I'm afraid. I'm sorry to have to tell you that Daddy's in poor shape. Angina they say. He falls a lot and looks ancient. Of course he was old when we were born (especially me). I know that Alyson is pretty worried. The farm's not in good nick either. Alyson keeps reminding me that it all now belongs to you. I daresay you won't turf us out if anything happens to Daddy but might you be able to give us an idea of future plans? I, for one, am loving being back in the choir and, guess what? I've been made senior scout. Needless to say, Daddy would welcome a visit from you. That is to say, if you can spare the time.'

The letter went on to tell of the poor condition of farm machinery. Roof tiles damp here and there. No trace of affection from his brother.

Malise could, of course, not spare time to visit Hertfordshire just then but replied, by letter that evening, that before long he was certain to present himself. What if Christian managed to usurp him? Probably not legally possible at this late stage.

Following days were taken up with preparation for the drive in Ruggles to Patricia's country hideaway. Not far from Lucca. Barely twenty kilometres. Funny to have a country retreat so near to the city – but Italians always made a habit of travelling short distances to their hideaways. He decided, although it was a wrench for him, to leave his Teddy bear behind. He didn't want Antonio asking questions.

He made a pile of boyish objects – likely to be useful and to impress. Hammock. Torch. Matches. Knife. Rope. Candles. A stretch of tarpaulin. Spirit lamp. He would set up a camp – somewhere in the woods that Antonio had talked to him about. Foodstuffs. Non perishables. They were heaped in a corner of the apartment. Several basket loads to raise and lower.