Illyrian Spring Page 13

  The street was certainly empty enough to satisfy Lady Kilmichael or anyone else. A beggar and a boy slept in a narrow strip of shade along the steps of Onofrio’s fountain, that curiously beautiful and unexpected structure, with its domed centre like a beehive hut; to her left a dog was snoozing on the steps of San Salvatore, the lovely little barrel-vaulted church vowed by the Senate after the first earthquake of 1520 – and vowed in vain, since most of the town was shaken down in the appalling disaster of nearly 150 years later; a cat was licking herself in the entrance to the Franciscan monastery next door; behind the fountain, by the guardhouse, a sentry stood, now and then shifting his feet uneasily, and sweating in his thick field-grey uniform – a country lad, accustomed to goatskin slippers, baggy homespun trousers, and sleeveless jacket, the tight hot clothing and heavy boots irked him miserably. Except for these, there was not a living thing in sight. Right down the broad street the stately square houses, all rebuilt alike after the second great earthquake of 1667, slept, half in sun and half in shadow, in their beautiful uniformity of design – four arched entrances below, four tall windows above, smaller windows above those again, and two little dormers projecting from the warm pinkish-brown tiling of the roofs. In all the arched entrances the shutters were drawn down – Madame Lina Amandi had withdrawn her embroidered jackets, her brilliantly coloured woven bags and stuffs, her old peasant costumes, into the dark recesses of her shop, leaving only a few strings of red and green slippers dangling like onions before her door; M. Kraljic had bundled his handbags of antique gold embroidery, his silver-inlaid cups and ewers with their Arabic patterns, his trays of earrings and crucifixes in gilt filigree, his heavy belts and bracelets of silver chain-work, into his little stuffy room crowded with chests and ottomans, and was now drinking muddy fragrant Turkish coffee among them in the gloom; behind his closed shutters the yachting chemist was drinking coffee of the German brand, equally fragrant but unmuddy, and reading an oldish copy of the Berliner Tageblatt; across the street Signor Lassi, the photographer, in a black skullcap and black alpaca jacket, had put on his spectacles to read the latest number of an Italian archaeological review over a postprandial glass of vermouth – he, like Mme Amandi, left his less valued commodities to languish before his door, and under his wide sunblinds pendant frames of picture postcards swung, very slightly, when a faint air moved along the street. From the state of the Stradone, in fact, an inhabitant of Ragusa would instantly have deduced one thing – that today was not a day when a ship bearing a Mediterranean cruise was anchored either off Pasquale di Michele’s fifteenth-century mole, which still protects the inner harbour outside the Porta Ploce, or in the roadstead at Gruz, the modern harbour a couple of miles away over the hill. On such days, and on such days only, the inhabitants of Ragusa, true to their great commercial past, sacrifice the siesta to trade, and keep their shops open even through the noon-tide hours to catch the stream of tourists off the vessel.

  The Stradone is, so to speak, the ground floor of Ragusa. On either side of it, the city climbs a hill – to landward the Monte Sergio, to seaward the Monte Peline. And where the city climbs, there also climb the walls, following its irregular outline up hill and down dale, with superb dignity and solidity – swinging out along the cliffs to seaward, themselves as white and high as cliffs; dropping to mirror themselves in the still waters of the harbour; climbing again abruptly by the Dominican monastery to contour Monte Sergio, among palms, cypresses, and the fantastic growths of agaves and cactuses, to drop once more to the northern gate by the Borgo – with square bastions and round bastions, square towers and round towers, and bulging half-isolated masses like the Torre Menze, which rises like a huge two-storey wedding-cake, heavily trimmed with crenellations, from the half-tropical vegetation at its foot. Along the level between the hills the Stradone runs straight from the Porta Pile on the north to the Porta Ploce on the south; it is in fact really the old coast road, which formerly, so cramped was the space between sea and mountains, passed right through the city on its way from north to south.

  It was very still in the Stradone. The water trickling into the fountain from the curious masks empanelled between its little pillars, the scrape of the sentry’s boots, an occasional burst of laughter from behind the guardhouse wall, were the only sounds which broke the silence. Lady Kilmichael’s head ached more and more, and presently she gave it up. She bundled her tubes into her box, wiped and put away her knife and brushes, and then carried her canvas, easel and all, into the cloister of the Franciscan monastery close by, where she set it down in a corner. A monk, snoozing among the roses and orange trees of the cloister garden, looked up, nodded at her amiably, and closed his eyes again. He didn’t mind – nobody minded anything here, Grace thought comfortably. Already she felt pleasantly at home and familiar with the main landmarks of the little city, though how well she would come to know it she did not then guess. She picked up her box and stool from by the fountain, and went off to the appointed restaurant to wait for Nicholas and lunch.

  The restaurant lay some little way up on the seaward side of the town. From a small narrow street one entered a small courtyard, overhung by a huge walnut tree, with one or two tables set about its trunk – in one corner, a flight of steps led up to a minute stone terrace, on which a single table stood by itself; in another an open door led into a dark hovel-like building – the kitchen, in which unpromising edifice food of the most unexpected perfection and deliciousness was prepared. Grace and Nicholas owed their knowledge of this place to the yachting chemist, who told them that they would find there the best food in Ragusa – which was true.

  The restaurant was empty when Grace arrived – it was half-past one, an hour when all good Ragusei have eaten. She went up and sat down at the table on the terrace, and ordered a vermouth – the dark syrupy vermouth of Dalmatia, of which a quart can be bought for about eight pence. The proprietor, who cooked, entertained his patrons, and waited on them in need, came up and discussed her lunch with her; Lady Kilmichael ordered spini di mare, a peculiarly heavenly form of crab, with a special sauce, for herself, and veal in white wine for Nicholas – all to be ready at five minutes past two. Then, sipping her vermouth, she leant back and rested. It was cool there, and pleasant, so close up under the greenness of the great tree, in the quiet courtyard; small encouraging noises of wood and metal issued from the kitchen, otherwise it was very still.

  But Lady Kilmichael’s thoughts were not so pleasant as her surroundings. Last night had been horrible! No wonder her head ached, she thought, the colour coming into her cheeks at the recollection. That really odious man! She had thought she would never get away from him. And then how humiliating – and how prickly – hiding there in the bushes by the roadside while he blundered about, cursing and searching, till at last he took himself off. And by that time the last tram from Gruz had gone, and she had had to walk the whole length of the road over the hill, ruining her evening shoes on the sharp white fragments of limestone. Worst of all, when she got into the Hotel Imperial, disreputably late, with her wrecked shoes and those incriminating prickles still clinging to her shawl, to be met by Nicholas, waiting up for her with a white and comminatory face. Ridiculous child! Why couldn’t he have come too, if he was so anxious about her? Then it couldn’t have happened. But to have stayed away in a sulk, and then so absurdly to sit up for her, and after asking rather nervously if she was all right, to say, as he did, ‘I gather I was right’ before he went off to his room – that was really intolerable! Who could have foreseen that a man like that, an officer, well-mannered and even witty, would have behaved so? And to a woman of her age? That Nicholas had apparently foreseen it was almost the most vexatious part of all.

  The fact was that Lady Kilmichael had got herself into a rather unpleasant adventure. The day after their arrival at Ragusa she and Nicholas had made the round of the city walls. They had found this walk, one of the loveliest in the world, to be hedged about with such restrictions and difficulties as befit so paradisa
l a promenade; they must produce their passports, they must get their permits in advance, they must go at certain hours and not at others, a soldier must accompany them all the way. Escorted by a perspiring Croatian recruit – who spoke no known language, but politely insisted on carrying Grace’s jacket, which he held at arm’s length, by the neck, like a duck – they had made that wonderful circuit: looked down into the green and shady cloister of the Franciscans, and the green and sunny cloister of the Dominicans; been dazzled by the white mainland slopes, with gay villa roofs appearing between the green of palms and myrtles and the silver of olives and agaves; had seen the piled roofs of the town, all of the same dim pink, like peach stones, dipping down to the Stradone and rising, sharp-edged with black shadow, up the further slope; above all, from one end of the city to the other, had looked across at the great ramparts along which they had come, standing out like the battlements of Heaven against a sea and a sky bluer than stone or flower or anything else on earth.

  Of course Grace wanted to paint a picture from the walls. She found, on applying at the Commandant’s Office, that this was against all the rules. The Commandant was away, but his deputy, a bulky well-nourished officer in the late thirties, explained the matter to her with great civility, on a vine-trellised veranda overlooking a courtyard. The Deputy Commandant spoke good German, and Grace, who had set her heart on doing a particular picture, used all her arts to persuade him to make an exception in her favour – she was accustomed to having exceptions made in favour of Sir Walter’s wife – while Nicholas sat by, scowling. In the end she was successful; she got a special permit, and when the stout officer then begged the honour of their presence at dinner at his villa over by Gruz, Grace thought it only decent to accept. Nicholas, however, curtly and uncompromisingly refused – giving as his reason, when Grace remonstrated with him afterwards, that anyone could see from a mile off that the fellow was a bounder, and not to be trusted an inch. His estimate unfortunately proved to be correct. Lady Kilmichael went alone; she was entertained, properly enough, by the officer and his wife at dinner – but the officer’s potations were rather liberal and when, in her thoughtless British innocence, she accepted his escort back to the tram, there was a tiresome episode on the dark path among the thick thorny bushes. Grace did not like being kissed by strange foreigners at all – she was frightened and indignant. Luckily her dress was dark, and the man so tipsy that she fairly easily eluded him. But it had all been most disagreeable.

  The puzzling part about the whole thing was Nicholas’s behaviour. He had still been in the deepest sulks this morning. Grace was not only puzzled; she was rather disappointed. Nicholas had never shown ill humour like this before – indeed his consistent sweet temper, this last fortnight, had attracted her very much. The thought had sometimes crossed her mind – though she banished it hurriedly as scheming and vulgar – of how well he would do for Linnet. He was well-informed, reasonably sensible; he had ideas, he was amusing, he was clearly affectionate and hitherto sweet-tempered. And he came of nice people, in the peculiar sense in which the English use the word nice – meaning thereby, not that a family is necessarily either amiable or amusing, but merely that it possesses a certain degree of good breeding. It was true that there was something rather childish, undeveloped about him – Grace couldn’t exactly say what; but she felt that he would develop, was developing. But this black temper, this stubbornness – oh dear, they were not nice at all. Why wouldn’t he come with her last night? After her easy moral victory at Clissa Lady Kilmichael had rather got into the habit of expecting easy victories with Nicholas – she had begun to speak her mind on various subjects, and, though sometimes disagreeing at first, in the end he usually accepted her views. Which made this last performance all the more unaccountable. And forgetting for the moment the immediate occasion of their disagreement, she fell back into another train of speculation – why she did have easy victories with Nicholas. When she spoke with conviction to him, he accepted it; perhaps if she spoke with equal conviction to Linnet, Linnet would accept it. But she couldn’t – hadn’t, anyhow; with Linnet she was afraid, she had not the self-confidence that she had now with Nicholas.

  Self-confidence – that was the thing she needed! It was a thing which, up to a point, everyone needed – must have, to carry them through things. And she fell to thinking how odd it was that Linnet should have done so much, more really than anyone else, to destroy her, Grace’s, self-confidence, when she remembered all the time and thought which she herself had given to fostering, with the most delicate tenderness and care, the child’s self-esteem. For Linnet, who was now, at nineteen, finished, delicious, poised, had not always been any of these things – at fifteen she had been almost plain, with features too big for her face, an overgrown figure that she didn’t know how to carry, and unruly nondescript hair; intelligent and honest enough, moreover, to be well aware of these shortcomings. But by praising her for the things she did well, dressing her becomingly, repeating nice things said about her, and pointing out where she had gained morally or conspicuously done right, her mother had built up, as it were, in the child that moderate degree of self-approval without which no human being can face the world adequately. It seemed a strange cruelty that no sooner was the edifice complete than Linnet should turn round and start to shatter the same fabric in her mother. Why was it? For Linnet was not cruel – Lady Kilmichael flung back the thought – though she might behave cruelly from lack of knowledge or understanding. As usual now, Lady Kilmichael turned to Nicholas for a clue to help her to solve Linnet, and found a possible one in the thing she had first divined in him on the way up to Clissa – youth’s vague resentment at being at such a disadvantage compared to age. Did Linnet too feel that growing up was a difficult business, and try unconsciously to support and reassure herself, in her inexperience and uncertainty, by ‘taking down’ the person whose superior equipment would press most immediately and heavily on her? Seek to establish her independence as a personality – all unwittingly – by breaking up her Mother’s self-confidence? Was that it? In the light of this new idea Lady Kilmichael as it were stared at the figure of her daughter, for once without either emotion or resentment. That would explain a lot. It would explain nearly everything. Yes – it might be so – though Linnet was far less tentative and unsure than Nicholas, although so much younger. And if one understood that, and allowed for it, one might stop being either hurt or afraid, knowing the rather touching cause; one might even be rather tenderly amused; more, one might try not to press so heavily, not to know so much more – or at least to avoid obtruding one’s knowledge. But the main thing would be that, understanding, one would stop being hurt and afraid. And then, of course, one would be self-confident, with Linnet anyhow.

  At that her thoughts swung round to Walter. Was it conceivable that she should ever regain her self-confidence there? That she should say what she thought and felt to him fearlessly? Once she had – long ago; to think of doing it now was an idea which checked and almost dizzied her. To talk to Walter without thinking – without even worrying about whether he thought her a fool or not; that would be freedom indeed! And suddenly she remembered a remark of Nicholas’s about his Mother, that poor lady whose lot seemed to have so many features in common with her own. He had spoken of her shyness socially, and had added – ‘But when my Mamma has had her ego burnished by one or two successes, she will take on anyone.’ That absurd phrase was curiously apt – one’s ego was burnished by success. But how many, and what shattering successes would her ego need to burnish it up to the point of taking on Walter?

  It is probable that Lady Kilmichael, for all her humility and simplicity, would not have been so puzzled by Nicholas’s behaviour – would indeed long ago have seen what was happening to him, if she had not been so obsessed by her own problems in connection with Walter and Linnet. But her habit of regarding the young man rather as a quarry of enlightenment for herself than as a person whose relations with her might require attention and care had made h
er even more blind, in this case, than the usual run of virtuous married Englishwomen, whose emotional blindness is a continental portent. However, his ill temper with her over the Deputy Commandant’s dinner had at last focussed her attention on his attitude to herself, and when illumination came, she was able to take it in.