Another Death in Venice, page 8
‘I don’t believe in divorce,’ she said seriously. ‘Let’s swim.’
They pushed themselves forward and began to swim. After twenty strokes Sarah rolled on her back and began to float, but Wendy kept going and when Sarah looked again, the sunflower hat was three hundred yards from the beach and still moving away.
‘Hey, signora!’ someone called close by. She did not at first associate the call with herself, but when a splashing in the water behind her made her turn, she saw the smiling face of Aristide.
‘Good weather now,’ he said, white teeth flashing.
‘Much better,’ she said. ‘How did you get on?’
She tried to stand on the bottom as she spoke to him and found the water was almost up to her chin. She hated to feel she was so nearly out of her depth and began to walk towards the shore, hoping her fear did not show.
‘Did you find some lodgings?’ she rephrased her question.
‘I find,’ he said, ‘but it is not certain. I will ask Sydney. They cost very much. Perhaps too much. But it is season. It is time for rich tourists.’
He made a dismissive gesture and smiled again.
‘Now I am tourist also,’ he said. ‘I enjoy.’
Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself half out of the water which was now breast high and duck-dived. She screamed as the water splashed into her face, and screamed again in real alarm as she felt her ankles gripped and forced apart. Then his long wiry body passed between her legs and he erupted behind her, shaking the water out of his hair and eyes and laughing once more.
‘Now you do,’ he said.
‘Oh no. I couldn’t.’
‘Yes. It is easy.’
‘No really. I don’t like being under the water.’
‘You don’t like?’
‘No. Really.’
‘All right,’ he said with a shrug. Have I offended him? she thought in alarm. Then he bent swiftly, pulled her legs from under her and sent her somersaulting backwards.
She came to the surface with her mouth full of water and her ears roaring. Her eyes stung and she could hardly see him before her, but she heard him laugh.
‘Not like, eh? Not like.’
‘You rotten sod!’ she gasped, lunging towards him. He turned and ran, splashing with his arms in an effort to reduce the slow-motion effect of the water. She pursued him into the shallows till she was too out of breath to run any further and he stopped and turned. The water trickled down his dark brown body. He was very thin but with the leanness of a hound in training; his rib-cage was clearly visible and the thin chain of his bell charm lay along his breast-bone like the anchor cable of a wrecked ship. He wore a continental swimming costume, nothing much more than a leather pouch with a fringe of dark pubic hair sticking out of the top.
‘I’ll have to lie down,’ gasped Sarah.
He nodded, went a few yards along the beach to retrieve his vest, slacks and sandals, then followed her to where Molly lay.
‘You met Aristide last night,’ said Sarah.
‘Yes. Where’s Wendy?’
‘Jugoslavia I should think. I’ve swallowed half the sea. I’ll have to have a drink. Aristide, it’s your fault. Here, go and get me a Cola. Molly?’
‘Yes, please.’
She gave the youth a five-thousand-lire note.
‘And get whatever you want for yourself.’
‘Merci, madame,’ he said.
Molly watched him go with interest.
‘Useful, isn’t he?’ she said. ‘As well as pretty.’
‘Pretty?’
‘Nice-looking, if you like. Do you think Wendy really is a les?’
Sarah looked at her in astonishment. The shy quiet girl’s role was to be seen and not heard.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I doubt it. Does it matter?’
‘Of course it matters,’ said Molly, with something approaching contempt. ‘It matters to her and Wilf and to what we think of them.’
She was quite right, of course. All Sarah really knew about Wendy was a version of her marital problems, so some awareness of her sexual predilections was pretty essential if anything approaching understanding was to be reached. Being ignorant was not an essential ingredient of liberal tolerance.
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
‘She’s very strange,’ said Molly. ‘And she dresses funny.’
‘So what?’
‘Well, men do. Poofs, I mean.’
‘It’s a bit different,’ protested Sarah.
‘Is it? I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Bob hates anything like that. He got into bother once for hitting one of them.’
‘Did he?’ Sarah resisted the temptation to advance the theory that this probably indicated his own repressed homosexuality.
‘Do you and Bob want a family?’ she asked casually.
‘Want? We’ve got three. A boy and twin girls,’ said Molly, taking the ground from under her feet. Sarah viewed her stomach with envy. Now she looked, the evidence was there, but how well the girl had retained her figure.
‘They’re with their grandma. I needed a rest.’
‘Mine too,’ said Sarah.
‘He beats her, you know. We’ve heard noises from their room.’
‘Yes. We’re on the other side,’ said Sarah.
‘I know,’ said Molly significantly. ‘Oh good. Here comes Jane.’
Sarah felt this was a bit cruel, even though Aristide certainly lacked the muscle to be Tarzan. The Cola was deliciously cold, like an anaesthetizing spray down the gullet. At home she would not allow the children to drink it, having read in a consumer magazine that it rotted your teeth, but here in the sun she craved it uncritically, like a pregnant woman.
Aristide lay on his back at her feet and sucked at his bottle like a baby.
‘Do you work?’ asked Molly.
‘A job, you mean? No, not an actual job. But I run the house and kids, of course …’
‘Oh, that.’
‘And I’m on various things: local consumer group, neighbourhood crèche; then there’s Oxfam, Help the Aged, several do-gooding things; as well as some political stuff, Labour Party, of course; and I’m doing an Open University course in sociology. So I’m kept fairly busy.’
‘Yes, but you haven’t actually got a job. I mean, is there anything you’re trained for?’
Sarah found it difficult not to show how piqued she was by this dismissive response to her crowded and useful life.
‘I did a commercial course, shorthand and typing, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Me too,’ said Molly gloomily. ‘Don’t you sometimes get sick of being at home doing nothing all day? I could scream sometimes.’
Sarah forgot her pique instantly. Here was something she could understand and help with – the bored housewife,’ second class citizen syndrome.
‘You mustn’t let it get to that stage,’ she urged. ‘Why not start working again?’
‘I don’t know. To tell the truth, Bob isn’t very keen, not till the children are grown up a bit more. He thinks my place is at home. Anyway, I don’t really fancy going back to an office, copy typing. I was just about as bored there. No, I’ve thought a lot about doing something else, you know, like becoming a teacher.’
Sarah nodded approvingly.
‘That would be great. Why not? Have you gone into it at all?’
‘I got some forms from a college near us that takes older students, but Bob didn’t fancy the idea at all. He said that it was daft to go on a training course for three years when I could be earning good money somewhere else.’
‘Which he doesn’t want you to do anyway,’ said Sarah grimly.
‘I don’t know what to do, really. He is my husband. I’ve been talking to Wilf about it. He’s on an education committee, you know. He’s been very helpful.’
‘Ah,’ said Sarah thinking that the kind of help Wilf was likely to offer to an educational novitiate could well be counter-productive.
‘My husband’s in education too,’ she said. ‘Why not talk to him?’
Michael wouldn’t be very helpful, perhaps, but at least he wasn’t so blatant with his erections.
‘Thanks,’ said Molly. ‘But Wilf’s at the top where the decisions are made. Did you get your change?’
‘What?’
Molly nodded significantly towards the now apparently sleeping Aristide.
‘I didn’t see him give you your change.’
‘No. He didn’t. Not yet,’ said Sarah.
‘I’d watch him,’ said Molly with a knowing nod.
Sarah felt irritated again. She could take the change of role from quiet mouse to feminist-guerrilla-in-the-making; indeed, she would do everything in her power to encourage the metamorphosis. But these woman-of-the-world hints were hard to stomach. She was still searching for some ironic reproof, superior without being patronizing when Molly disarmed her by saying, ‘You won’t say anything to your husband, will you?’
Sarah thought she might have misheard.
‘My husband?’
‘Yes. He’s a bit jokey, isn’t he? I wouldn’t want him to say anything in front of Bob.’
A gush of sympathy washed away all Sarah’s irritation. The girl automatically assumed her discretion. But men were lumped together as the enemy. Jokey; that was one way of putting it. As for Bob – Victorian paterfamilias; tun of lard settling ponderously down to his marital rites; guard dog lying across the exit from the prison which he and all the others like him had built for their women!
Surprised but not disturbed by the vehemence of her thoughts, she answered, ‘No. I won’t say anything.’
Aristide stirred, opened an eye, smiled up at her.
Sarah did not return his smile.
‘Where’s my change?’ she said.
Wendy was drinking alone at the bar when Sarah came down for dinner.
‘These prices are ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I can buy this stuff in Sainsbury’s for what it costs here, and they’re supposed to make it.’
Sarah examined her glass. It seemed to contain some kind of vermouth.
‘They do give you a lot,’ she said cautiously. ‘You only get a thimbleful at home.’
‘Do they? I never drink the stuff at home,’ said Wendy.
‘Oh. Why do you buy it?’
‘I don’t. I said I could buy it. But I don’t.’
‘You enjoyed your swim?’ Wendy had still not returned when Sarah had decided to leave the beach and have a shower and an hour on the bed with The Gulag Archipelago,
‘Yes.’
‘You’re very good. Did you do it competitively?’
‘I was the best in my club and I swam for the county a few times.’
‘Was Wilf interested?’
Wendy laughed like a seal barking.
‘Him! He once followed me into my cubicle and tried to do me. Before a race! That was all he was interested in. There was talk of the Channel once.’
‘The Channel!’
‘Yes. I might have amounted to something. Aren’t you drinking?’
‘Well, thanks. I’ll have the same as you.’
‘Signora.’
It was Aristide, standing nervously a few feet behind her. After recovering her money from him, they had exchanged no more words and now the sight of him made her feel both irritated and guilty.
‘Hello,’ she said. Should she offer him a drink? Her hand went to the necklet he had given her. He smiled and nodded approvingly.
‘Pretty,’ he said.
That was surely worth a drink.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked and felt Wendy’s disapproval beside her.
‘No, thank you. The luggage, please. I would like to take it.’
‘Of course!’ she said. The poor boy. She had quite forgotten his bags. Perhaps he had wanted them earlier but had been afraid to ask.
She still had her key in her hand and she gave it to him.
‘Help yourself,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’
Wendy watched him go over her glass.
‘Anything valuable up there?’
‘Not really. Why?’
‘I’d say he’d done a bit of thieving in his time.’
‘That’s terrible. You’ve no right to say that,’ Sarah protested weakly, remembering the beach that morning.
Wendy shrugged the subject away and lit a cigarette.
‘I went through his insurances the other day,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot. It’s not for my benefit, of course. It’s just that he values himself so highly. Has Michael got much?’
‘I don’t really know,’ confessed Sarah.
‘Of course, if he’d died on the plane coming over, he would have been worth another fifteen thousand. Don’t you think separate flights make sense?’
‘You’re being a bit morbid, aren’t you?’ said Sarah. ‘I dare say most people would rather go together if they have to go.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘It can’t be that bad, Wendy. If you want a divorce, that’s one thing. But you wouldn’t really wish him any physical harm, would you?’
‘Listen,’ said Wendy. ‘Listen.’
She dipped her forefinger in her drink and carefully marked a spot on the polished bar. The barman yawned his contempt for package-deal tourists, but watched her with a glimmer of interest. Something about the tense curve of her athletic back (bared almost to the buttocks by a cutaway evening gown in purple and gold) and the frowning concentration of her face proclaimed this was real, this was earnest.
‘See that,’ she said. ‘If that was a button, right? and pressing that button would set off a bomb in his head that would blow his eyes out through his nostrils, watch.’
Carefully she placed her thumb on the damp spot and pressed hard, maintaining the pressure till the flesh turned white around the scarlet thumbnail.
‘Boom! Boom!’ she said. ‘That tramp’s been gone a long time.’
‘What?’
‘He’s been a long time collecting a suitcase. I would take a look if I were you.’
‘Honestly, Wendy, you do go too far!’
‘Do you want me to take a look?’
She shifted off her stool.
‘No, thanks!’ said Sarah hurriedly. ‘I want to go upstairs anyway. I’ve left my handkerchief.’
She wondered to what extent Wendy’s homicidal fantasies would ever be externalized. The woman needed treatment, that was evident. But what if the only real treatment were for Wilf to die, boom, boom?
At the door of her bedroom she paused, offended suddenly by a vision of Aristide rifling her belongings. Am I turning neurotic too? she asked herself, and went in.
There was no sign of Aristide but the suitcase and carrier lay on the bed. From the bathroom came the sound of running water.
‘Aristide!’ she called and pushed open the door.
He stood under the shower with a bar of Michael’s herbal soap in his hand.
‘Excuse,’ he said with the inevitable smile.
Casually dropping the soap to the floor, he reached out for a bottle of her rather expensive medicated shampoo and poured half a pint over his head. A brief rub produced a huge aureole of foam. Despite herself, Sarah began to feel annoyed.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded stupidly.
He rinsed most of the bubbles out of his head and without bothering to switch the shower off he stepped out, seized a towel and began drying himself. The shampoo bottle fell on its side and began oozing greenily over the tiled floor.
‘You’ve got no right!’ exclaimed Sarah. ‘You should have asked.’
‘Asked? Why ask? I want to be clean. This is not expensive to you, this water? I want clean. What’s the matter? Am I too dirty to be clean here?’
He was beginning to look angry also.
‘Of course not,’ said Sarah. ‘But … oh, look at my shampoo!’
She stooped to retrieve the bottle, but he was too quick. Picking it up, he held it over his head once more letting every drop of the green liquid trickle out.
‘You stupid fool!’ exclaimed Sarah, grabbing at the bottle, then, as she realized she was pressing against his damp body, jerking back.
As though symbolically, the necklet he had given her got tangled with his bell-charm and for a moment they were joined together like neighbours on a slave ship.
He reached out his hand to disentangle them, instinctively she jerked back again, the chains tightened. She attempted to undo the clasp but her fingers could not manage it and finally in an ambiguous rage, she took the necklet in both hands and snapped it.
At that moment there was a tap at the outer door and a voice called, ‘Are you all right, Sarah?’
Unable to meet Aristide’s gaze, Sarah turned on her heel, marched out of the bathroom, and opened the bedroom door to reveal Wendy’s impassive face.
‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Why shouldn’t I be?’ demanded Sarah, sliding out into the corridor.
‘They’re going in to dinner,’ said Wendy. ‘Has he gone?’
‘Aristide? Yes. He’s gone. Let’s eat.’
As she pretended to lock the door behind her, she remembered the suitcase on the bed and wondered if Wendy had noticed. She didn’t seem the observant type.
‘Your dress looks a bit damp down the front,’ said Wendy.
‘Does it? Well, in this heat it’ll soon dry.’
Molly was already at their table.
‘The men aren’t back,’ said Sarah.
‘You didn’t expect them!’ said Molly.
‘I don’t know. I hope Michael’s not driving.’
‘Not much chance of that with Wilf around,’ said Wendy. ‘This minestrone’s worse than the tinned stuff at home.’
Sarah pushed her soup away after a few mouthfuls. She was sitting facing the glass door between the diningroom and the foyer. Through it she glimpsed Aristide with his suitcase and carrier. He didn’t glance her way but moved across the foyer towards the main exit. She thought of him under the shower. He had been so natural, so undisturbed, while she had behaved like a maiden aunt confronted by an exhibitionist. At least that was how she imagined she had felt. Or was her memory merely compensating for the suspicion that her surprise had inclined less towards outrage than desire? Which was worse? Outrage, of course. It was a betrayal of the basic dignity and equality of man and woman, whereas desire was merely a pseudo-betrayal of a social and artificial relationship. She pulled herself up. Only on rare occasions had she allowed herself to speculate on the possibility of being unfaithful to Michael. Sitting in a crowded dining-room with two other women at your table was not the right situation.
