Illyrian Spring Page 12

  Grace was touched by this admission, coming on top of his emphatic statements about being grown-up. For the first time she received a direct hint of how superficial may be the apparent assurance of youth, caught a glimpse of youth’s vague resentment with age for having so many cards in its hands, so much greater certainty and ease in dealing with life. This was quite a new idea. But her immediate response was the quick and certain one which generosity dictated; Lady Kilmichael’s thoughts might halt and hesitate, but her instinct was winged.

  ‘No,’ she said decidedly. ‘You do everything just right, so far, my dear child. And if you don’t, ever, I will bite you! But look, if we’re going to see anything at Clissa I think we ought to go on, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Back to the treadmill!’ said Nicholas, sitting up and beginning to put the tea things together. But his tone told her that he was perfectly satisfied.

  The fortress of Clissa sprawls along the narrow summit of a ridge between the road and the valley. The drop to the road is steep but short, commanding the pass absolutely; on the valley side a garrison could almost drop stones through a couple of hundred feet of clear air into the chimneys of the village which lies immediately below, smothered in a delicate foam of olive trees. A roughly cobbled track leads up through the gateway and along the ridge, from building to building, from level to level – the rock space on which the buildings are perched is so narrow and so irregular that from inside the place resembles a village street on a steep tilt, rather than a fortress. It is completely empty and desolate now – bats infest the roof of the chapel, the coloured and stencilled plaster of the finer apartments breaks off, or hangs by a thread in loose pieces; wildflowers stray in over the deserted doorsills, unchecked, and plant themselves wherever a fault or angle in the white stone gives them foothold. Only the roofs are for the most part still sound, and for the best of reasons; the weakness of the fortress was always its water supply, and the roof of each building was made flat, within a low parapet, to catch and keep what Heaven let fall in the way of rain. Seen from above, those flat cemented roofs, with a little hole in one corner for the water to drain off by to a cistern below, are a pitiful reminder of the privations of former sieges – privations to which King Bela of Hungary’s two daughters succumbed in the year 1242, when they were immured for safety at Clissa during the Tartar invasion.

  The Peugeot, not without trouble and anxiety, was coaxed and hustled up the long steep loops of road below the pass. ‘Wonderful marvellous us!’ observed Nicholas in a flat self-satisfied tone, as he finally brought it to rest, boiling and steaming, at the roadside. This was his stock phrase wherewith to register any minor triumph over circumstances, and the complete and vacuous folly of it always amused Lady Kilmichael. He peered at her now to see if she were smiling, and finding that she was, permitted himself a grin in response, as they set off to explore the fortress.

  Lady Kilmichael’s chief impression of Clissa, afterwards, was of the flowers. As for Nicholas, he was absorbed in them at once. The cliff beside the gateway was draped with pendent cushiony masses of a snow-white cerastium, with silver foliage almost as pale as the blooms; he was off after this instantly, clambering up the rocks like a large clumsy cat. Meanwhile, beside the track, she found again a pink flower whose bright rose-colour had intrigued them all the way up the road, when they dared not check the Peugeot to gather it – a goat’s beard, it proved to be, also with silvery stalks and foliage, and opening its inflorescences on a most ingenious plan, first the outer florets of the ray alone, afterwards the rest; so that there seemed to be flowers of two patterns on a single root. Inside they found it everywhere, standing stiffly in the cracks, its pink heads erect against the white walls, disputing for sustenance with great sprawls of henbane. And all about the little courts and steps of the fortress they found another and a lovelier thing still – the pale pink convolvulus, with trumpets the colour of apple blossom, whose trailing silver foliage is cut like the leaves of an eschscholtzia; indeed they thought at first that it was a climbing eschscholtzia, wreathing walls and rocks with its delicate pink and silvery grace. C. elegantissimus, botanists call it – and for once their description is apt. Here at Clissa, for the first time, Nicholas and Lady Kilmichael were confronted, in its full beauty and strangeness, with that most exquisite feature of a limestone flora – the prevailing silver colour of leaves and stalks, all that on other soils is green. Nicholas in particular was enchanted, and gave only the most perfunctory attention to the buildings or their history, or even to the marvellous view; when Lady Kilmichael sat and imagined the feelings of the two Hungarian princesses, watching from narrow windows the Tartar hordes on their small savage ponies pouring past like a dark evil river, and spreading out over the plain below, Nicholas cheerfully interrupted her to exhibit the palest yellow alyssum ever seen, primrose-pale and of course silver-leaved, which he had found on one of the towers.

  They lingered so long that when Lady Kilmichael at last looked at her watch, and called out ‘Nicholas! Do you realise what time it is?’ they found that there was very little hope of getting the Peugeot back to Spalato in anything like reasonable time for dinner – even, as Nicholas said, with gravitation to assist. They had passed one restaurant as they came up, only a couple of hundred yards down the road, and almost opposite the fortress another modest ‘Restauraéija’ sign offered an immediate solution to the food problem. They chose the latter, and went across to try it out in hopes of supper.

  The restauraéija proved to be fully as modest as its sign, a little bare barn-like place with the humblest of tables and chairs. But it possessed a ‘terrace’ – in other words an unparapeted square of concrete reached by a flight of steps, which commanded the very wonderful view; and to the terrace they betook themselves to have supper. This, when it came, matched both inn and sign: macaroni soup full of garlic and swimming with strong-flavoured herbs, raw smoked ham, bread thickly peppered with caraway seeds and maigre cheese. Lady Kilmichael, healthy, hungry, and accustomed to odd food in odd places, enjoyed every mouthful; Nicholas subjected each item to a careful scrutiny, made searching enquiries about it from his companion, and then ate about half, groaning and predicting disaster. His digestion, as Grace had already discovered, was something of a familiar to him – no doubt because of his previous illness; ‘my tummy’ often seemed to her to sit at table, an almost visible third, whose probable reactions to a meal were canvassed in advance and deplored subsequently. This made her a little impatient, even while it amused her; Nicholas was like any old gentleman over his inside. His fussiness about food was quite the maturest thing about him – that and his curious flashes of perception; they fitted very oddly with his singular general youngness. Remembering Lady Roseneath, she sometimes wondered if a weak inside was what he had ‘got,’ or a sound digestion what he had ‘lost’ – but it couldn’t be both! Thinking of this now, she smiled to herself.

  ‘What’s amusing?’ Nicholas enquired.

  ‘You – fussing about your food! Do eat it up and forget about it. Look at Mount Mossor!’

  Nicholas looked. Above the valley, filling silently with blue shadows, above the dim lavender of the open plain below rose the great limestone mass, glowing in the evening light. But that white rock glowed true and clear, without any hint of purple or bronze; the great curved stratifications showed as a pure incandescence, the colour of burning peat, purest of all the many tones of flame. As they looked at it she knew that he had at last forgotten about his food, forgotten everything but the beauty he looked on; she received then, as so often, an extraordinary impression of the strength of his feeling about the thing they both beheld, though how communicated, how known, she could not tell. For all he said was ‘Mossor’s good,’ when he at last returned his attention to his plate. But her sense of this strength of feeling in him reminded her of the problem of his painting, and as they ate their cheese she embarked on it.

  ‘I think I shall go on to Ragusa on Thursday, Nicholas,’ she began.

/>   ‘That will suit me all right,’ he returned. ‘Where shall we stay? I hope there’s some rather more savoury hostelry than our friend the Ritz. There ought to be some pretty good things to paint there too.’

  ‘I want to talk to you about your painting,’ said Grace, nerving herself for an effort – she felt that this might be going to be a difficult business, and fell involuntarily into the rather portentous tone and manner which parents employ to tackle a difficult business. Nicholas was startled by it.

  ‘I say, do you think it quite hopelessly bad?’ he asked, beginning to fiddle his bread, and looking anxiously at her.

  ‘No, I think it’s very definitely good,’ she answered.

  ‘You think that if I went on with it I might get somewhere?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I think if you were really to work at it you might go a long way. But Nicholas—’

  ‘You really think that!’ he interrupted. ‘That’s rather bracing, you know, for me.’

  ‘Yes, but I want you to think sensibly about this. If you’ve promised, if it’s settled that you are going to be an architect and not an artist, is it a very good plan for you to go on painting now? Won’t it rather unsettle you? Is it really worth your while to take it up seriously again?’

  He stared at her. ‘Worth my while? Of course it’s infinitely worth my while, every bit that I can do and learn, if I’m really not fooling myself in thinking that I can ever be any good. What can you mean?’ He paused, and a dejected uncertain look came into his face. ‘Are you saying all this because you don’t want to go on being bothered with teaching me? Of course there’s no reason why you should. You only said to let you see what I could do; I remember. Only somehow I thought perhaps you were going to let me go on working, if you thought me any good.’ He fiddled his bread again, more violently than ever; she saw that his fingers were actually trembling, emotional creature that he was. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a moment in a colder tone – ‘I’m afraid I’ve been an awful bore, mopping up your time and using your canvases. But I was going to get you some more, you know.’

  ‘My dear child, don’t be absurd,’ said Grace, warmly and decidedly. ‘There’s nothing I should enjoy more than to go on helping you – as far as I can; I know nothing about teaching, you know. But even if you think it worthwhile to go on now, you must see that it’s rather difficult for me to aid and abet you in doing something that your parents disapprove of, and that it’s settled you should give up. Isn’t it?’

  Nicholas’s face lightened considerably at this speech. He put his head on one side, and the beginnings of a grin appeared, slowly.

  ‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ he said. ‘Solidarity of the parents! But Lady K., surely the fact that I’m going to be an architect doesn’t make it wrong for me to do a spot of painting now and then, in my holidays? This is a sort of holiday, you know.’ He looked at her in a very coaxing way; she made a negative gesture with her head.

  ‘It’s all very difficult, isn’t it?’ he said, before she could speak. Grace laughed in spite of herself. ‘Listen, Lady K.,’ he went on. ‘I’ve said I’ll be an architect, and as I must, I will. But nothing is irrevocable, is it? And if there’s really something in my painting, I ought to go on with it, as and when I can. Nothing will stop me, now I know it’s possibly some good. And in time I might get good enough to make a living at it – if I did that half my Father’s objection would be gone. So it’s more than worth my while to take this chance of working with you, if you can bear it. It’s very odd,’ he pursued, ‘but for some reason I seem to be getting on more with you even than I did with Zarini; I’m enjoying working with you, and you seem to have a way of hitting the nail on the head about certain things – colour, and emphasis – that he hadn’t, although he’s so much better known. So you see it’s really a tremendous chance for me, your being here,’ he concluded.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Grace. ‘Very well, Nicholas, you shall go on working, but on one condition – you must let your Mother know that you are painting, seriously, while you are out here. I won’t do it otherwise.’

  ‘The clean breast, in fact?’

  ‘Yes, the clean breast.’ She laughed.

  ‘That’s easy,’ he said. ‘I’ll write tonight. She won’t really mind! I’ll order some more canvases too, from the S.A.A. in Venice; they’re quite good. You’re sure it won’t be a bore helping me?’ he asked earnestly.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You are frightfully good to me, you know,’ he said, gazing at her across the table with a steady intensity which she found almost embarrassing.

  ‘My dearest child, I like doing it,’ she said, thoughtlessly using her customary form of address to her own children. He continued to look at her in silence.

  ‘Why do you worry about my Mother?’ he asked at last. ‘Apart from parental solidarity? You don’t know her.’

  ‘Because—’ Grace looked away from his intent eyes, out over the plain, fading now almost into invisibility. Why did she worry about Mrs Humphries? She did – but even more, in this, she was worrying about Nicholas himself. She didn’t want him to behave in a way which, if it happened with Teddy or Nigel, she would mind – mind, not for her sake, but for theirs. There were intangible loyalties, sincerities beyond any technical definition; to infringe them injured the soul. She had only said what she wouldn’t do; but she was really thinking of what he couldn’t do – what she mustn’t let him do.

  ‘Because if you let her know about this,’ she said at length, ‘nothing will be spoiled between you and her; and nothing in you will be—’ she hesitated – ‘well, damaged. You see there are all sorts of things which are much more important than what one actually does – interior things: I can’t explain. But they are what really matters – they’re all that matters.’

  She spoke with conviction, imprecise as her words were – with a conviction which surprised herself. She felt suddenly that this was a thing she knew; something in her spoke with authority. She sat looking out over the darkening plain, strangely untroubled by the usual doubts and hesitations which she felt with Linnet or the boys, as to how her words would be received, even if she had, improbably, made her meaning clear. And because she had spoken with conviction, if incompetently, her meaning was received and accepted, as the utterance of conviction usually is.

  ‘I see,’ said Nicholas, and that was all. But it sufficed. She knew that he not only saw, but believed; that on that intangible battlefield where she was accustomed to meet only with reverses, she had gained an easy victory. Why had it been easy? She must think that out.

  Suddenly, from somewhere below, the sound of a violin came up out of the gathering darkness – long slow notes, carrying a melody curiously restrained, withdrawn, remote, as though reluctant to disclose some secret. Grace recognised it – the opening bars of Strauss’s ‘Morgen.’ It must be a gramophone at the lower restaurant – who would be playing ‘Morgen’ here? In a moment the voice would come in – she hoped it was the Schumann record.

  ‘I’m sure I know this – what is it?’ Nicholas murmured, leaning across to her.

  ‘Morgen – listen!’ She held up her hand, as the words began. It was Elizabeth Schumann. Clear and pure, the voice wound through the complex harmonies, poured out the beautiful words with that matchless integrity of interpretation, gradually unfolding the melody’s secret – the gravity at the heart of bliss. It was a song which always moved Grace, by its quality of indescribable security and reassurance, of absolute confidence in human love. She sat listening, watching the shadowy outline of the fortress opposite standing up against the great bulk of Mount Mossor, which had faded now to the colour of a pale pearl against the pale sky, feeling rather than thinking – confidence! – in love, in affection – and how lacking she was in it! Towards Walter, towards them all; she was afraid, she had so little faith.

  And to the shore, the wide-flung, blue horizon

  Speechless and slow, we shall go down together.

  Yes, that was
it – that confident simplicity, she thought, as the violin filled the pause with completed harmony:

  Deep in each other’s eyes will look, in wonder

  While on us sinks our rapture’s helpless silence.

  Oh, heavenly completion! Where had it gone, for her? Where and why? As the violin reverted again to the opening melody, sealed up the secret once more, something made her look back at Nicholas. Dark as it was, she could see that his eyes were still on her face.

  ‘I wish I knew German,’ he said, as it ended. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Oh, I’ll sing it to you sometime – it is translated,’ she said.

  ‘I was wondering what it was making you think about,’ he said.

  But Lady Kilmichael did not tell him. Nor did it occur to her to ask what Strauss’s secretive melody had made Nicholas think about.

  ELEVEN

  Lady Kilmichael was sitting in the open street beside Onofrio di la Cava’s fountain at Ragusa, painting the long vista down the Stradone. It was one o’clock, and she would get no lunch till two; it was hot, and her head ached a little with the glare off the white roadway, the houses, the white towers above the houses. There was, however, a reason for this peculiar arrangement about luncheon. During the midday hours at Ragusa business ceases entirely – from twelve till three-thirty the shops are shut; the inhabitants retire, first to eat and then to take a siesta, and the streets become as empty as those of a northern city at three o’clock in the morning. She wanted to get the whole of the Stradone, with the alternating blocks of sunlight and shadow, and the buildings at the further end – and in order to get an unimpeded view of its entire length, she had to work in the hours after twelve, when the usual throng of passers-by had ebbed away. Nicholas was doing the same thing in the Piazza at the other end of the town, and they were to meet for lunch. He had procured himself an easel, some canvases and brushes, and a rather limited supply of paints from Venice – which supply he augmented, shamelessly, by raids on Lady Kilmichael’s tubes; but he had forgotten a palette – it was inevitable that Nicholas should have forgotten something! This calamity had been retrieved, rather oddly and unexpectedly, during a visit to the principal chemist. Nicholas had run out of a medicament called Maclean’s Powder, with which he was wont to soothe his fractious inside, and wanted more. The chemist only spoke German, and Grace was roped in to explain the nature and properties of Maclean’s Powder. In Ragusa, unfortunately, that valuable product did not exist; but the chemist, who was alert and intelligent, volunteered to ‘make something up’ if Nicholas’s symptoms were fully explained to him. By the end of the highly technical conversation which ensued, all the parties were on the most confidential terms possible; it was only natural that the chemist should enquire the reason for his clients’ presence in Ragusa and the length of their stay; though he would probably have done this anyhow, after the friendly fashion of the place. On hearing that they were artists, he evinced a certain surprise, at least as regarded Lady Kilmichael – ‘the lady also?’ – and the utmost interest; he painted himself, it appeared. Grace at once bethought her to ask him whether one could obtain a palette in Ragusa, explaining Nicholas’s dilemma. ‘Unmöglich!’ (Impossible) he declared; but then he volunteered to lend the young gentleman his own. No, he would not need it – he never painted during the business months, only on his holiday in September and October, when he took his small yacht for cruises among the islands. So, equipped with the yachting chemist’s palette, Nicholas was painting at one end of the town while Lady Kilmichael painted at the other.