The Man Who Went Down With His Ship (27 page)

If she wasn’t kind and sweet and honest, and had already been corrupted, then of course that message would be ignored, or torn up and thrown in his face along with who knows what accusations. But that, Charlie thought, was all just part of the risk.

He was feeling nervous; and he had gone over the presentation of the necklace ceremony about a hundred times in his head by the time the minibus had reached his father’s flat, his friends had picked up their bags and said goodbye to his father and mother, and he was accompanying them to the airport for the ten o’clock flight to Rome. He had imagined thrusting it into Isabella’s hands and running away. He had imagined taking the girl aside and saying ‘Isabella, please …’ And he had imagined creeping up behind her and without warning putting it round her neck. In fact, though, the traffic being still worse than usual and the airport still more crowded than his father had warned him it would be, by the time they got there Charlie hardly had a chance to think about ceremonies at all, or feel nervous about anything other than everyone missing their plane. He rushed around trying to find how and where to check in. He pushed,
shoved, panted, sweated and lurched from counter to counter trying to save his friends from having to join long lines of German and Scandinavian tourists. Mr Rizzuto cornered him and made a long but well-meant speech about how grateful they all were for his help, and ‘this’—a little package placed in a hand—was from all of them. Giorgio Orsini gave him a sardonic little wink and a somehow ironic slap on the shoulder, as if to say ‘You and I know one or two things that they don’t know Charlie.’ His wife earnestly implored him to come and stay with them in Italy. Her children kissed him on the cheek. Isabella’s brother shook his hand. And the Englishman, also on the
sardonic
side, said, ‘Keep dreaming of England, Charlie, and thank you for everything.’ By which time, Charlie was in such a flap that he had not only practically forgotten he hadn’t said goodbye to the one person he really wanted to say goodbye to, but had also practically forgotten that she existed. Indeed, if he hadn’t seen her standing just a yard this side of the immigration control, waiting for her brother to join her, she might well, he told himself afterwards, have disappeared without trace from both his life and his memory. (Of course she wouldn’t really have, he also told himself. He would have been heartbroken and
distraught
if she had slipped through the barrier without his being able to say goodbye to her. He suspected, however, that he added this more out of a sense of duty than conviction, and just as with a part of himself he had been looking forward to Isabella leaving, so with a part of himself he would have been relieved if she had simply vanished.)

But Isabella was standing just a yard this side of the barrier. She didn’t disappear without a trace and, seeing her there, Charlie felt once again both that she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen in his life, and that when she did go through immigration control and he lost touch with her undoubtedly forever, it would be as if she had hacked off some part of his body with a blunt knife and was taking it away with her. She would leave him still more deformed, more grotesque
than ever and without, now, the slightest chance of his ever being whole, or unscarred again. She couldn’t go, he told himself as he stumbled towards her, the apotheosis of ugliness,
gracelessness
, disconnectedness. It would more than disfigure him if he never saw her again; it would kill him. And her beauty, her untainted beauty, her untouched beauty, was itself the blade that was thrusting into him and was causing him such agony he thought he was going to scream. Oh, her slim dark arms. Oh, her long wonderful legs. Oh, her small, round breasts. Oh, her thighs, her cheeks, her hair, her eyes; he
couldn’t
go on if he never saw her again. He couldn’t. Oh, why hadn’t she just gone through the barrier and disappeared? How could she torture him like this, standing there grave and perfect as his limbs were severed, his nails torn from his fingers, his eyes gouged out and his bowels burned with irons? Oh Isabella, go, go, he wanted to scream at her. ‘Oh Isabella, please, let me hold you, touch you, enfold you, envelop you. Oh Isabella, Isabella …’

‘Isabella.’ But that, as she turned and looked at him, no longer in horror, or pity, but just with the mild surprise of someone who has been dreaming and hasn’t realised she is being approached, was all he was capable of saying. And aware, out of the corner of his eye, that little Giorgio Orsini was moving in fast from the left to claim his daughter, and was looking more sardonic and beady-eyed than ever—indeed, was looking absolutely delighted about something; that something being almost certainly the torment he had seen that Charlie was going through—he just thrust out the packet he had been clutching in his hand, glanced at it with a feeling of sweating terror when it occurred to him he might have given her the packet that Mr Rizzuto had just given him and then, having seen he had handed over the right one, turned and fled.

Keep going, Charlie, he shouted to himself as he crashed away, unconscious now of his foulness, of the abomination that he must have seemed as he careered into people, tripped, picked himself up and staggered on. Keep going, don’t stop, and don’t,
whatever you do, look round. Don’t, don’t, Charlie commanded himself. Keep going, keep going, keep going. If Orpheus, though, who was a god, could not resist the temptation, how could Charlie Epps, who was a miscarried foetus that had survived? And while it seemed to him that he must have covered at least a hundred yards, when he did turn round he saw that he had gone no more than twenty. What was worse, by some horrible trick of fate, in the time it had taken him to walk those twenty yards, all the people who had a moment ago been crowding the space between him and Isabella had, for a second or two, moved aside. So not only was there no one to shield him from his beloved’s gaze, but there was no one to shield him from the gaze of Isabella’s father, Isabella’s step-mother, and brother and sister, in fact of the entire Rizzuto/Orsini party. If
embarrassment
had ever been distilled, all the self-consciousness of the world reduced and refined to an essence of quite appalling intensity, Charlie was certain it couldn’t have been more bitter, more agonising than the wave of whatever it was that washed over him in that instant. He felt, he told himself, as a butterfly must feel, when a pin is thrust through its heart. Or perhaps as a man must feel when about to be shot in the head. He was paralysed; he was stripped to the bone; he was more exposed than he had ever imagined it was possible to be exposed, and survive.

The eyes looked at him. They turned to Isabella, who was staring down at her present, herself scarlet with embarrassment, and then back to him. They watched, some here, some there, and all flashing back and forth, as Isabella, made clumsy by the attention, stripped the paper from the little box. They watched as she opened the box and took from it a gold necklace inlaid with garnets that looked, from where Charlie was standing and in her hands, like the cheapest, most vulgar trinket that man had ever invented. And they watched—their owners, Charlie was certain, scarcely breathing now—as Isabella stared at the necklace, as she contemplated (and this was so obvious Charlie
himself held his breath) either just dropping it on the floor, as if it were contaminated, or actually hurling it from her, as if it were white hot. And as she then, very slowly, clasped it in her hand and walked over towards Charlie.

What was she going to do? Lash his face with it? Give it back to him without a word? Or content herself with hissing some obscenity at him, before marching off to show her passport to the waiting, watching officer?

For it wasn’t just her friends and family who were watching now, Charlie felt. It was as if the whole airport and everyone in it had frozen, all waiting to see the outcome of this sudden little drama.

Six yards … five yards … four yards …

‘Thank you, Charlie,’ Isabella murmured, still red in the face, as she leaned forward and kissed him gravely, but sweetly, on the cheek. She lowered her eyes. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been beastly to you this last week. But you made me cross, pretending to be so ugly. You’re not ugly at all. You’re …’ and with that she paused, almost added something else, and turned and walked quickly away.

For a second, as the airport came to life again, the space between Charlie and the others was filled once more with
tourists
and officials, and he became conscious of the noise and the confusion around him, Charlie, though he was no longer paralysed, didn’t move. He simply stood there, watching Isabella rejoin her father and friends, and seeing those friends wave at him as they started to move away.

Then, remembering he had promised the driver of the hired minibus that he would be back immediately, he gave a quick wave in return and made his way, briskly, towards the exit.

She had told the truth, he nearly cried out as he dodged and weaved through the crowds. In the end, even if she could have gone further, could have said why his pretending to be ugly had made her cross, she had told the truth and hadn’t tried to hide behind some fable about his having exposed himself to her. That
was what had made her cross. What was more, she had been quite right to be cross. It had gone on long enough, this nonsense; this self-mutilation that necessitated the constant attention of his companion, pity. Oh Isabella, Charlie nearly cried out, aware that he was getting carried away now, but not caring, oh Isabella, you’ve saved me. I shall never pretend again. In future, I shall admit to my passions, to my hatred of the false, to my wonder at the sky, to, to above all perhaps, my love of and dream of England. And if I do admit to them, if I am always faithful to my love, who knows if we won’t, one day, see each other again?

Briefly, as Charlie reflected that there he was going too far and that not only would he never see Isabella again, but that it was very doubtful if, having had her moment of truth, Isabella would ever have another in her life, he felt a faint mist of melancholy obscuring the sun of his happiness.

Then that mist cleared; and walking on and touching his cheek, Charlie told himself it was useless to speculate about what might be. All that mattered was: he had been kissed. And that, for a while at least, anyone looking at him would see not a fat, ugly twenty-three year old of uncertain origins, but a young man who bore a remarkable resemblance to an Egyptian statue. A young man of ineffable beauty; with far-seeing eyes; an enigmatic smile; and an expression of consolation and grace.

The headmaster had written in March that the school wasn't entirely satisfied with Natalia.

*

Irina Kalugina had been upset by the first of these communications from her daughter's school. The second, however, made her cry, rage, feel sick, call her friends to ask for their advice, try – in vain – to get in touch with her husband, Natalia's father, to ask for
his
advice, and finally call the school, speak to James Nelligan's secretary, and arrange to drive down to Battlement College the following morning and meet the headmaster at eleven o'clock.

‘Will you come with me?' she asked her best friend, Victoria; but Victoria said no, she was sorry, she thought it better if Irina went alone.

So, the day after she had received the hateful letter, dressed in an expensive black suit and black high heels, with her pale blonde hair tied tightly back, and wearing only a touch of make-up, Irina set off at nine o'clock from her house in Chelsea, and drove towards East Sussex.

She got to the school in good time; at 10.58 she was shown into the headmaster's study, to find herself facing not only Nelligan – a tall, broad-shouldered, red-faced former England rugby player, who had an almost self-consciously open expression and smile – but also the deputy headmaster – a small wiry man with bright dark eyes and a pale face made paler by the darkness of his hair and his six o'clock shadow – and James Nelligan's sister – the school's head English teacher and, until recently, Natalia's greatest champion. In her last report, the woman had written, ‘I believe the very fact that Natalia didn't come to England or learn English until she was ten accounts for her astonishingly fresh and inventive use of the English language. But more than that, Natalia
thinks
in an original and inventive fashion, and while it is always unwise to say such things, I am convinced that if Natalia wishes to be a writer, as she claims she does, she will have a bright future.'

Mary Kemp
nee
Nelligan was tall, grey-haired and a few years older than her brother, Irina guessed. She was also, Irina was sure, more intelligent and serious than her brother. Not for her any fake, or even genuine bonhomie. Her expression, her manner, everything about her spoke of thoughtfulness, straightness and decency; a Cambridge graduate who, Natalia said, was reputed to have worked for fifteen years in the Foreign Office before a divorce, a nervous breakdown and her brother's entreaties had persuaded her to leave London, take a teacher-training course, and join the staff of the boarding school in East Sussex that the Nelligans' father had founded in the 1950s. A school that had a reputation for academic excellence, a liberal but not permissive attitude towards its students, and extremely high fees.

These three – headmaster, deputy and sister – stood on one side of James Nelligan's desk as Irina came in, though Mary Kemp seemed pained at having to assume such a judgemental position. On the other side there were two empty chairs, to one of which the headmaster waved his visitor, beaming at her as if he knew exactly what she was going through and he was an old hand at comforting women in distress. Especially pale and lovely Russian women.

‘Please, do sit, Mrs Kalugina,' he said. ‘Would you like a coffee? A cup of tea?'

Irina shook her head. ‘No,' she said. ‘Thank you.' Her manner made it clear she wanted to cut the niceties and get on with it.

Nelligan obliged. Sitting himself, he waited till his colleagues had followed his example and began, ‘As I said in my letter, Mrs Kalugina, this decision we have reached is extremely painful to us all here. Particularly so to my sister, I might say, who has always entertained the highest hopes for Natalia.' Nodding towards Mary Kemp, he paused and changed tack. ‘We had hoped that
Mr
Kalugin might be joining you, us, today.'

‘My husband is travelling somewhere in Uzbekistan, or Tajikistan, or – I have no idea where my husband is,' Irina said, sounding, she heard, more dismissive than she meant to. ‘But he leaves me entirely responsible for Natalia. Whatever needs to be said or done …s'

James Nelligan cleared his throat. His face became redder. ‘Normally, we would be delighted if one of our pupils started reading Strindberg, Nietszche, Dostoevsky – in the original, of course! – and would encourage such intellectual curiosity. And Bill here,' he indicated his deputy, ‘Mr Birling, who teaches philosophy and religion,' mother and teacher nodded at one another – ‘like my sister, has enormously appreciated and valued Natalia's – as I say – spirit of enquiry, and willingness, eagerness to discuss matters that your average fifteen or sixteen year old scarcely dreams of. Or if he or she does, tends to become earnest, pretentious about. Whereas Natalia …

‘In the last year, however, Bill has remarked that Natalia has seemed determined not merely to
discuss
philosophy and religion, but to
demolish
philosophy and religion, and undermine the beliefs of her fellow pupils. And because she is intellectually more of a heavyweight than her fellows, she has achieved, if I may put it like this, quite a high knockout rate. She hasn't just undermined her friends' beliefs – she has in a number of cases destroyed them. The trouble is: Natalia herself has the intellectual strength to
remain standing even without beliefs. Whereas her less morally sturdy companions – having had their beliefs destroyed, they tend to collapse. And in their confusion, turn to petty or not so petty crime, and general dissoluteness. What is more, having arrived at their position not by any real intellectual process, but simply because they have been let us say bludgeoned into it by Natalia, they tend to become – silly.'

‘Brain-damaged,' Bill Birling said.

‘As I also wrote in my letter, I believe: that in itself may not be entirely desirable in a school such as this, where we have students from many parts of the world, some of whom have parents with very strongly held beliefs. Or perhaps it may not be desirable in any school. Heavyweights delivering knock-out blows to their weaker companions smacks of bullying, even if not of the physical kind.' Somewhat apologetically, Nelligan added, ‘Natalia gives the impression of enjoying flooring her fellows, seeing the canvas littered with bodies. Even so – we like to believe we are strong enough at Battlement, well-trained enough in the art of picking up the fallen and helping them back on their feet, to accommodate in our midst the occasional bruiser … or let us say subversive. Particularly when that subversive is as remarkable as Natalia.

‘When though it comes to physical undermining, physical destruction, drug-taking – there, I'm afraid, we have to draw the line.'

Irina, faced with the triumvirate behind the desk, had till now stayed silent; not least because she had a certain difficulty in following some of Nelligan's boxing terminology. But she felt at last compelled to break her silence.

‘Natalia does not take drugs,' she stated. ‘She has told me so – she tells me everything she does, whether I want to hear it or not, whether I approve of it or not, and – she has told me she does not take drugs, and I believe her.'

‘All parents believe their children,' chipped in Bill Birling, who unlike his colleagues plainly had no time for plutocratic Russian beauties, and still less for their unruly offspring.

James Nelligan glanced at Birling, and let it be seen he could have done without an intervention that was neither timely, nor true. He went on to Irina, pointedly, ‘In this case I believe you are right to believe her. And that – I was going to say, that is the trouble. But what I should say is, that compounds the trouble. You are right, Mrs Kalugina: Natalia does not take drugs. Though no doubt,' he felt bound to say for the sake of his deputy, ‘she has
experimented
with them. But for one who does not take drugs herself, who has said on more than one occasion that only the weak take drugs – and that, therefore, drugs should be freely available so the weak can go to the wall – yet who exhorts others to take drugs and permits herself, at the age of seventeen, to decide who
is
weak, who
is
expendable – that is not just bullying, Mrs Kalugina. That is – I'm not sure what word to use. Totalitarianism. Incipient fascism. In any case, extreme and unacceptable arrogance.

‘We have spoken to Natalia on a number of occasions, of course, and whenever we have, she could hardly be more reasonable, more charming, more understanding of our attitude. She agrees herself that the deliberate destruction of a fellow student – of a fellow
human
– would be wrong, wicked, intolerable. She claims, with utter reasonableness, that we only cast her as the villain of the piece because of the way, in the last year or so, she has chosen to dress.'

Until she had been fifteen, Natalia Kalugina had looked like a slightly taller version of her mother: pale-skinned, pale-haired, diaphanous. The only difference being that whereas Irina had greyish-brown eyes, Natalia had remarkable pale-blue eyes – like her father. From about sixteen onwards, however – more or less at the same time as she had pinned up in her bedroom at home a quotation from
The Brothers Karamazov
– ‘If there is no God, everything is permitted' – she had started to dye her fair hair black, to circle her eyes with heavy black make-up, and to dress in a variety of all-black costumes that had tested to the limit Battlement's policy of allowing pupils to wear what they like.
‘Within reason,' the school curriculum stated, and Natalia was always prepared to debate the limits and meaning of reason.

Himself always prepared to see the other side of any argument, James Nelligan continued, ‘She may not be entirely wrong in that. Her – I don't know how she would define her style. Post-punk, semi-goth – I can't keep up with the young and their fashions. But I suppose her general look might have inclined us to see her as more of the Lord or Lady of Misrule than she really was, is. Nevertheless – one of our students recently attempted suicide, Mrs Kalugina. She was one of Natalia's closest friends.'

‘Natalia told me,' Irina murmured. She thought it worth repeating, ‘She tells me
everything
.'

‘The girl said she was depressed, unhappy, and upset by her parents' recent divorce. As she may well have been. But we all' – Nelligan glanced left and right – ‘believe that essentially it was a case, as I say, of bullying. Madeleine, like so many teenagers, was standing as it were within sight of the edge of the cliff. But who urged her forward? Who practically shoved her over the edge?'

Before Nelligan could name her daughter, Irina said firmly, ‘No. I do not believe that. I will not accept that. I know Madeleine. She has come to stay with us in London. Natalia has been to stay with her in France. They are devoted to each other. What does Madeleine say?'

‘What I just told you,' Nelligan said, starting to losing patience. ‘That she was depressed and upset about her parents.'

‘So why do you blame Natalia?'

‘Because we suspect that Madeleine had been taking drugs for some time before she made her attempt. Because those who are not part of the Kalugina set
say
that she had been taking drugs, and tell us that it was Natalia who procured them for her, and maybe even paid for them.'

‘Jealous racists,' Irina snorted. ‘Just because she is Russian. Just because Natalia likes to go round boasting that her father is a gangster.'