The Little Walls by Winston Graham
I tried my best not to think of Leonie and the whole bitter mess-up of her marriage, but it didn’t work. I saw the story she’d told me with different eyes now. It made sense of so much more of their behaviour, nonsense of mine. Marriage of course wasn’t sacrosanct, but it was obvious that she still loved him in spite of his faults …
I don’t remember what time it was when we got to Sorrento, but the sun hadn’t quite set, because the cliffs looked as yellow as butter in the late sunlight. The bus stops near the quay, and I walked unsteadily along the long, stone pier, feeling pretty weak and light-headed but mercifully free from the immediate need to be sick. There were a few small boats about and a group of men gossiping by the seats, but what at once took my attention was a yacht in the harbour with three men on it still in bathing costumes, and two of them were running up a sail. I’d seen this yacht in the harbour at the Marina Grande, so I walked as quickly as I could round to where I was within hailing distance and shouted to them.
They were Americans, all fairly young, and when I told them I’d had an accident and was stranded on the mainland they said, sure, we’re off there ourselves in ten minutes, Ken’ll come over for you in the dinghy.
I told them the best excuse I could think up, and one of them had a couple of bars of chocolate to spare, and somehow the intervening space of water was covered and by the time darkness had fallen I was standing in the funicular which mounts at about the speed of a water gauge from the port to the town of Capri.
In the dark I stared down at the harbour, which glimmered like a little Naples as we rose above it. The season was nearly in bud, and canned music floated up from a couple of quay-side taverns. Two old women with bundles murmured together close beside me, and in the next box-compartment a group of French tourists argued over the fish they had caught.
I thought of what Leonie had said about Martin and Grevil when I first met her in the church. I had brushed it aside with anger then, but now the argument cropped up again. Martin and Grevil had been two men living on different levels of conduct—wasn’t that what she’d said? Was it true that Grevil’s violent reaction to the way Martin had let him down had magnified it out of its true proportion—as it were, converted petty theft into grand larceny? Practised on a lesser man than Grevil, the mean betrayal of friendship—which, anyway, would never have occurred if things had gone right—would have had smaller consequences. Had his death, the whole rotten affair, been the bitter tragedy of a clash of two codes, of two different standards of life and behaviour? From the time of the discovery by the police, Martin Coxon had been struggling in waters too deep for him.
But for their friendship none of the rest would have followed. So it cut both ways, didn’t it? If Grevil had been a lesser man, it couldn’t have happened. If Martin, had been a lesser man, it couldn’t have happened. This was every bit as true.
Today had made me understand far more about Martin than I had ever expected to. He was like an animal that had shaken out the barb of Grevil’s death but carried the venom along with him. That was all borne out by what had happened to day—the stones hurled too far away to hit me, the iron candle-snuffer thrown contemptuously on the floor. And he had fought fair with me all through, that was the queer thing. He had fought fair.
The central square seemed full of people as I pushed through it. Their voices murmured in the illuminated dark. There’d been some sort of a boat-load of new arrivals. I was held up at the entrance to the alley leading to the hotel, and people seemed to cross and re-cross so that there was no way through them. They were like an influx of new thoughts, trespassing on and confusing the old. Three men carrying loads of bricks, bowed down under their load waited patiently to get through. Someone stared curiously at my face. Then we were in, plunging into the three-storey ravine that led to the hotel.
When I asked for my key there were a lot of exclamations and efforts of help, but I went straight up and stared at myself in a mirror, and I was a mess. I had some tea and cakes in my room, and when the boy brought them up he asked if Commander Coxon would be in for dinner. I said no. I wondered how often Martin left kit behind in hotel bedrooms. I didn’t seem to care any longer. At least that much had gone out of me during the day.
I lay in a warm bath for about half an hour trying to let everything be soaked away, and after a bit it seemed to me that something did let go, something that had been at a stretch inside me ever since getting the first cable in San Francisco.
The telephone rang.
I waited a bit, hoping it would stop, but the thing went on and on. I stepped out of the bath, grabbed a towel and went into the bedroom.
‘‘Hallo.’’
‘‘Hallo.’’ I waited again. It had been a man’s voice, but now the line seemed dead. Probably someone had got the lines crossed at the switchboard. Then the voice came more clearly. ‘‘Philip Turner?’’
‘‘Yes?’’
‘‘Philip, this is Charles Sanbergh. I’m glad to know you’re back.’’
‘‘Er—yes. I’m back, I——’’
‘‘You remember Charlotte invited you to dinner?’’
‘‘Did she? No, I don’t remember.’’
‘‘Well, there’s plenty of time. It’s not until eight thirty. You can come, of course?’’
The story I had ready didn’t seem to work when it came to the point. ‘‘ I’m sorry, no. But I shall have to have a word with you some time, Charles. It’s about your boat——’’
‘‘Good. Then we can expect you in half an hour?’’
I said: ‘‘I have to tell you that I lost your boat today. I think—I’m pretty certain I can arrange to pay for it in dollars—but it will put you out a great deal, I’m sure. I’m very sorry indeed.’’
There was a pause. ‘‘That’s a pity. I’m sorry too. As you say, perhaps we can come to some arrangement.’’
Something in his voice. ‘‘You knew?’’
‘‘I don’t think this is a thing to discuss over the telephone.’’
‘‘No … I’ll come round in the morning.’’
‘‘I shall be away in the morning.’’
I looked at the floor. Something, the tea or the warmth or the rest, had put the ground back where it ought to be. I was still deadly tired, but I. didn’t want to miss morning boat. ‘‘ Perhaps later tins evening I could slip round for a minute or two.’’
‘‘Charlotte would specially like you to come to dinner. We have Langdon Williams here, and it is rather a special occasion. I think you promised to come.’’
Williams was the artist Charlotte had mentioned at our first meeting. If there was one thing I felt less like than light conversation about nothing, It was light conversation about art. ‘‘ I’m afraid I’m rather a sight. I hurt my face.’’
‘‘I’m sorry. But I think you should come. We counted on you to make even numbers.’’
The receiver crackled once or twice. ‘‘ Oh … all right. Thank you very much.’’
When I put the phone down I went to the mirror again, cursing myself for being so weak-minded. The very last thing tonight. Yet what else could I do? I still owed Sanbergh a boat.
The sticking-plaster came off without more bloodshed, and luckily it wasn’t iodine the bus conductor had used. But I still looked like a beaten middle-weight
I began to dress.
And then at that point I realised I’d lost Leonie for good.
I think perhaps it was the telephone call that had done it. The phone ringing must have wakened some expectation that wasn’t quite dead. I realised for the first time that it had to be dead. I realised for the first time how much had been going on inside me on the quiet. Somewhere hope had been plodding away.
I put on a clean shirt, and going for it saw Grevil’s diary at the bottom of the case. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. The pasteboard binding was cracked and coming to pieces, as if the extreme heat of the tropics had destroyed it. I felt at that moment as if I were saying good-bye t
I tied my tie and combed my hair and put on a jacket and walked out of the hotel and thought: there were things I should have said to her, a different way I should have been; I was out of proportion; if I’d said to her … I should never have left her here pursuing that will-o’-the-wisp to Amsterdam … I wonder why her passport was still under the name of Winter; probably she’d not bothered to get it changed and then getting his cable … why did I ever send for him … what did it matter whether he was Buckingham or Coxon … I was crazy … But it was done now and finished with … In any case she was his, his all along. She had made that very clear. She had been the will-o’-the-wisp. I’d got to put it behind me … but if I’d said to her that night in the hall before I left for Amsterdam … I’d said the right things then. I should have gone on, gone on. But had she ever given me any reason to think … Well, I had so thought; it hadn’t been what she’d said but …
The walk down from Poltano was flower-strewn compared to the one I now made to the Villa Atrani.
By the time Macy and Gimbel were barking a greeting to me I wasn’t feeling too good again on my feet and the outlook got even darker when I saw that all the usual gaggle were here: Castiglioni the big Neapolitan shipowner; Mile Henriot, and the awful woman who’d been at the other party in the toy hat. I remembered Langdon Williams as a shy man with hardly anything to say at the best of times, and he looked defensive in this company.
We had cocktails and talked. Sanbergh wasn’t yet to be seen. Charlotte was sympathetic about my face, but I didn’t get an inquisition from her, which made me think she too had an idea there’d been trouble. After a bit the woman with the hat though she hadn’t the hat on now, bore down and began to talk to me about the Kinsey Report on the sexual behaviour of the Human Female. I’d thought she had her eye on me the other evening. I wasn’t quite sure from the way she spoke now whether she thought I was a medical man, a psychiatrist, or just another male waiting to be shot to pieces to prove Kinsey wrong. I thought I ought to tell her about the blind, sub-human, infantile behaviour of the man she was talking to. I thought I ought to tell her that.
Charles Sanbergh was still not there when we went in to dinner.
You get to a stage sometimes, and I had got to it now, when you are hungry but can’t eat, ache with tiredness but can’t rest, and probably at such a time it’s as good to be in company as out. Only it doesn’t feel it. You wish you’d never come, and long to be able to do all the things you can’t do but wouldn’t enjoy if you could. I caught Charlotte Weber’s eye on me several times. Jane Porringer was sitting next to me, and I don’t think she found it easy going.
Then after we’d nearly got through the first course Mme Weber looked towards the door and said: ‘‘Ah, there you are, Charles. We had to start because everyone was famishin’.’’ Then she beamed at me as if to say, you see, it was worth-while coming after all.
All the men had got up because Sanbergh had brought a lady with him. After a sudden hesitation she slipped into the empty seat opposite me and beside da Cossa. It was Leonie.
Chapter Twenty-three
She hadn’t known I was there. I could tell that because of the sudden hesitation. She went a bit green and nearly turned away. I don’t know when you’re punch drunk whether you can’t feel the next shock; if so I wasn’t because I felt this all right. I should have been ploughed at any medical for D.A.H.
Then after a minute, after she said something to Charlotte and began to eat, I remember thinking rather stupidly that it was impossible that she should be here—or else all the stress and violence of this afternoon was a delusion or a trick of the sun.
I must have stared hard because when Berto came to take my plate I got in his way and knocked the fork off. Mme Weber was saying that Leonie was back only for the evening, and da Cossa, shifting his aim for a bit, began to ask, how was Rome? She dodged his questions as well as she could until Charlotte, looking irritated for once in her life, headed him off.
For the first time I glanced at Charles Sanbergh. He was dressed as usual like Harper’s idea of what the well-found man should wear on a Riviera holiday, and he could just as easily have been either to a murder or to a Mass for all you could tell from his face.
I looked back at Leonie. Relieved of da Cossa’s curiosity, she was sitting quite still in her high-collared turquoise silk frock, not even pretending to eat now. She had a look like an El Greco angel—fine drawn and slightly haggard.
A hand was touching my arm. I stared at Jane. ‘‘What? I’m sorry.’’
‘‘Hamilton was asking if you would stay on the island much longer.’’
‘‘I have to go tomorrow.’’
Da Cossa said with satisfaction: ‘‘ The—er—portrait has not come on so well, eh?’’
I didn’t speak.
‘‘I told you not to worry about it, dear boy,’’ said Mine Weber. ‘‘The weather has been against it. Summery. One wants to bask. And this time last year one positively needed an igloo.’’
‘‘Philip will return,’’ said Sanbergh.
Langdon Williams said: ‘‘I’m glad you’ve not given up altogether, Turner.’’
‘‘Of course,’’ said Mme Weber, ‘‘ what I’ve really always wanted him to do is a portrait of leonie.’’
There was silence except for the clinking of a bottle as the Italian boy moved by the sideboard. The woman with, the hat was saying to Signor Castiglioni: ‘‘… and apparently twelve and a half women out of every hundred don’t get any fun out of married life at all. That’s what it says, sweetheart. I often wonder how these statisticians work in the halves …’’
I said suddenly, sharply to Leonie: ‘‘Where is Martin?’’
She hadn’t looked at me before at all, but now her eyes came swiftly up.
I said: ‘‘Didn’t he come with you?’’
‘‘Did you expect him to?’’
‘‘Well, yes.’’
I don’t know what it was in those few words, but they must have had something because they stopped everybody talking as if we’d threatened them with a gun.
‘‘Leonie phoned me,’’ Charles said pacifically. ‘‘I borrowed Signor Castiglioni’s speed-boat and fetched her.’’
‘‘You—fetched her from Poltano?’’
‘‘Yes. She wanted to collect her things.’’
‘‘Oh …’’
After a definite pause somebody decided to begin talking again and the meal went on.
‘‘Why didn’t you bring Martin back as well?’’ I said to Charles about three minutes later.
‘‘He has a cracked rib. He will have to be strapped up for a few days.’’
Jane said to me: ‘‘Is that your friend Martin Coxon? Has he had an accident? I hadn’t heard.’’
‘‘It’s nothing,’’ said Sanbergh, still giving nothing away, still smoothing over.
‘‘… of course I’ve had no medical training,’’ said the woman with the hat to Signor Castiglioni, ‘‘but when you take a cross-section of the public like that, the only ones who will consent to talk are the extroverts, and sweetheart, we know what extroverts are …’’
Another course got itself put in front of me. Leonie looked at me again, and this time didn’t look away. We stared at each other. My pulses were fairly thumping.
Isaid: ‘‘I wish you’d told me earlier.’’
‘‘What?’’
‘‘That he was your——’’
‘‘What good would it have done?’’
‘‘I wouldn’t have had the hope.’’
She flushed.
I said: ‘‘You don’t know how bitterly I’ve regretted ever having brought him back into your life.’’
‘‘It was for the best.’’
‘‘Well, it was inevitable I suppose—sooner or later—if you feel like that. Are you rejoining him tonight?’’
‘‘Yes …’’
‘‘I see …??
Jane touched my arm. ‘‘Mr. Williams was asking you about the States.’’
‘‘I’m sorry. I didn’t hear.’’
He smiled and repeated his question. I said: ‘‘I didn’t do any painting over there at all.’’
There was silence for a second or two. Then Signor Castiglioni’s voice broke in: ‘‘But, madame, this inquiry you speak of, this inquiry into the private life of ladies … it is the American ladies, you said? And many confess they are cold? Then I would say they are very different from the Italian lady.’’ He chuckled. ‘‘The Italian lady is—what is the English slang you use?—sauce piquemte——’’
‘‘Mustard,’’ supplied Sanbergh.
‘‘Ah yes, Charles, thank you. Mustard.’’
I said to Leonie: ‘‘You’ve surely made some plans. What do you intend to do?’’
‘‘It rather depends on you.’’
@t:‘‘On me? Why?’’
‘‘Well, you told him, didn’t you, that so long as you were alive …?’’
‘‘Oh, God, let him do what he pleases. I’m sick of revenge.’’
‘‘I’m—so very glad to know that.’’
I said: ‘‘This afternoon I was too far gone to listen to reason. You were right to try to stop me, but I just didn’t bear what you said … The thing had got out of hand. I can do nothing more now …’’
She said in a queer voice. ‘‘Oh, Philip, I wish you could see …’’
She stopped.
‘‘Go on.’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘ Darlings,’’ said Charlotte Weber, ‘‘ don’t you think the conversation is getting a little starko? Not that one minds but … Dear Mr. Williams, tell me about your Paris show. I’ve only read a solitary account …’’
The boy waiter had bent to take the unfinished plate from in front of Leonie. Her eyes glinted in the light as she looked up at him when he asked her some question about it. When he’d gone she put up her fingers to brush back the wisp of fringe that always fell across her forehead. For a second I was reminded of Martin’s action, though the two were quite dissimilar. She looked at me again. Up to then I thought I’d been the only one feeling that polite talk wouldn’t do. But I could see her struggling to say something and at the same time to say no more. It was on her lips and in her eyes.