A Man Over Forty (32 page)

‘Did you doubt it?' asked Balintore.

Palladis looked at him in surprise. There was a ring of authority in his voice, and his face wore again its once familiar look of innocence and truth and arrogance. ‘I thought,' he said carefully, ‘that you might have embroidered it – exaggerated here and there—'

‘Frequently,' said Balintore, ‘I have been guilty of understatement – about myself, that is – but I have never exaggerated. I have never felt the need to.'

He had recovered, or seemed to have recovered – if only for a little while – his old temper of assurance. Perhaps it floated insecurely on whisky – perhaps more safely on the warmth of Ricci's manifest affection – but it was buoyant; and that was a change indeed.

‘She was a great ship, the
Herzogin Cecilie
, said Ricci. ‘We joined her in Copenhagen. We sailed from Leith to Copenhagen, and Ned paid our passage. You remember, Ned? We were tired of school, we had made up our minds to go to sea, and then we read in the paper that the
Cecilie
was likely to be held up in Copenhagen, short of her proper crew, and God knows her proper crew was small enough.'

Palladis and Myrtle, eating veal-and-ham pie and Stilton cheese, listened for a long time to burly reminiscence of their life under sail. Their first voyage was to Lourenço Marques, then on to Australia to load with grain, and home round Cape Horn in a roaring gale that shredded sails and carried away one of the lifeboats. There was a day, on a later voyage, when they made 340 miles, and a day when they lost a score of sails off the Lizard. There were shipmates they remembered, sometimes with admiration and respect, sometimes with mockery. There were the Old Man and the Cook, there were Cape pigeons, and corposants burning blue at the yardarm. There was the last voyage when the old barque came home in eighty-six days, and ran ashore on the coast of Devon.

‘I wasna with you that time,' said Ricci. ‘I jumped ship in Port Lincoln, and went to Sydney.'

‘But you were aboard when she was wrecked?' asked Palladis. ‘Why have you never told me?'

‘It's something I've never spoken about,' said Balintore. ‘It was a thing I tried to forget. She was a great ship, as Peter says, one of the last of the old sort, and I'd sailed in her for three years, in every sort of weather. Damnable weather, and days of pure serenity. She was a match for every season, and nothing daunted her. But what could she do in a blind fog? She was blind when she ran aground on Bolt Head, and – oh, let's talk of something else! She fell away from the rock when she struck, and nothing could hold her. She was done for, and a thing of beauty went out of the world. God knows why.'

‘I remember the day when the news reached Sydney,' said Ricci, ‘and I sat down and wept. Then I got up and drank ten pints of beer – I was working in the kitchen of a cheap and dirty restaurant – and I hit the boss over the head with a soup-ladle till he fell to the floor crying for his mother. We were both geetin' – I was greetin' fou – and we were both Italian by blood, though not according to the passport. So he understood how I was feeling. He'd been a sailor himself at one time, though only on a steamer.'

He helped himself to more whisky, and Balintore said, ‘It was after that I went to Spain.'

‘Ay, Spain!' said Ricci. ‘You'll need to tell me about Spain.'

He drank his whisky, leaned back on the cushioned settee, and began to breathe more deeply. His eyes remained open, but no longer looked at Balintore; no longer looked at anyone. His features retained their composure, and to casual inspection he seemed a man in excellent health and still tolerably alert: a good-looking, burly man with a square, weather-hued face, brown eyes, short nose, square chin, and curling black hair brushed back from his forehead and distinguished by a white mèche. But his breathing was deep and slow, and his eyes were unfocussed.

‘He's fallen asleep,' said Myrtle softly.

‘With his eyes open?'

‘It's one of his peculiarities. He's a very remarkable man, and when he gets excited he sometimes drinks too much; and then, quite suddenly, he'll fall asleep. But as long as it's daylight he doesn't close his eyes.'

‘We'll have to go,' said Palladis.

‘You're welcome to stay. He won't sleep for more than an hour or two.'

‘No, no,' said Balintore. ‘We've stayed too long as it is, and given you far too much trouble.'

‘I've enjoyed having you; and we'll see you tomorrow, won't we? You've given Peter so much pleasure.'

She went on deck with them, and to their surprise put two fingers in her mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. She resumed immediately her demure appearance, and on the beach the fisherman she had summoned pushed out his boat.

Balintore and Palladis were rowed ashore, and walked to their hotel.

‘I haven't drunk whisky at midday since we had a party in O'Hara's Bar,' said Palladis. ‘And, like Ricci, I'm going to sleep it off.'

‘My oldest friend,' said Balintore solemnly, ‘and we meet after twenty-seven or twenty-eight – after nearly thirty years, in the middle of the Cyclades!'

‘You must tell me more about him at dinner,' said Palladis. ‘But I may be late for dinner.'

It was half-past nine when they met again, and Balintore, who had wakened earlier, had already drunk several glasses of ouzo. He was eager to talk, and began his tale of the Riccis over a plate of fish-soup.

‘His grandfather came into Scotland with a pack on his back, and a couple of years later was selling ice-cream from a barrow in Leith Walk. We're xenophiles in Scotland, like the Greeks: we've domesticated Irish and Lithuanians, Italians and Poles – ay, and English too!'

‘You needn't imitate Ricci's accent,' said Palladis.

‘I wish I'd kept it. I used to speak as he does, and it did me no good to anglify my voice.'

‘Tell me about his grandfather.'

‘I never knew him, but Peter used to speak of him. He wasn't ashamed of him. Old Pietro Ricci bought a shop in Leith, and did well for himself. There's hardly an Italian in Scotland who hasn't done well, and most of them started with ice-cream. In a social history of Scotland the ice-cream barrow shouldn't be ignored – and those who pushed them were fine people!'

‘You're slipping into that accent again.'

‘And what's the harm in that?'

‘None at all. But you don't sound like yourself. And I want to hear about Pietro Ricci.'

‘He prospered. But he and his wife had only the one child, who was Peter's father. He was given a good education, trained as a chemist, and in due course the old man set him up in business in his own shop. A shop in Queensferry Street, not far from where we lived. I can see it still, with the name
Antony Ricci, M.P.S.
in a label of great gold letters over the window; but it's no longer there. And we lived in Eton Terrace: over the Dean Bridge and turn right. It's not half a mile away. And Peter and I were friends from the start. And better friends than ever when I learnt what I was: not the legitimate son of Professor Balintore of the Chair of Scottish History, but a foundling and a bastard. A bastard in all probability. And Peter being a foreigner – well, that seemed to bring us nearer together.'

‘According to him, you were both bad boys.'

‘We were too damned clever to put up with the majority: that's what he meant. It was a good school we went to – all those Edinburgh day-schools are good: Watson's and Heriot's, the Academy and the Royal High – and ours was probably the best of them, but too prosaic, too sensible, too addicted to the middle of the road for our liking, and we rebelled. From the schoolmaster's point of view we may have been bad – but now Peter's a millionaire, and I, before I cracked, before I tripped and tumbled off the pavement of common sanity, with eight million people watching me – I was a person of some consequence wasn't I?'

‘You enjoyed a great reputation, and had earned it,' said Palladis gently.

‘No! I'd won it like a cheap-jack taking money from yokels at a county fair.'

‘There's a persistent majority of yokels in the world.'

‘That doesn't justify the cheap-jack and his tricks.'

‘If he amuses the yokels—'

‘He damns himself.'

‘You've had a good day,' said Palladis. ‘Don't spoil it by bitterness.'

‘No, by God, I'll say no more. To meet Peter Ricci again, and remember the days aboard that old lurching barque, roaring round Cape Horn under the cliffs of the sea – there's no bitterness there, and it leaves no room for bitterness. Let's have some brandy.'

By the following morning the wind had gone down, and while they were still at breakfast a messenger arrived with a note from Ricci that read: ‘Come down as soon as you're ready, and bring pyjamas and tooth-brush. We're going for a little cruise round to Andiparos where, I'm told, there's good bathing. No hurry, but the sooner we start the sooner we get there. Back tomorrow night.'

‘I never thought I'd go to sea again with Peter Ricci,' said Balintore.

‘We must cultivate Myrtle,' said Palladis. ‘I'm very sorry for that poor girl.'

‘She's very rich.'

‘She has been impoverished by Ricci's wealth.'

‘There are compensations in that sort of pauperdom,' said Balintore.

An hour later the caique's anchor was aboard and her deck was responding, like a muffled drum, to the beat of a powerful diesel engine. She was heading at half-speed for the rocky islets that guarded the entrance to the bay. Balintore and Palladis met the skipper, who wore a gold ear-ring and looked like an ill-made copy of an ancient Greek; for his features were grimly classical but his legs short and bandy. There was an engineer, who was also the steward, and the two seamen were young and cheerful. The caique had ample room for visitors: she was broad in the beam though shallow of draught, and
about fifty feet over all. As well as the owner's cabin aft of the saloon, there were two good cabins forward.

They turned south, round the southern foreland of the bay, and presently went more slowly as the sea, shoaling quickly, turned from pale blue to apple green; and a boy in the bow shouted incomprehensibly to the skipper in the deck-house. The russet land of Paros, cut into trapezoid shapes by low stone dykes, shone like a tarnished cameo, of onyx or agate, to the left; and the modest slopes of Andiparos emerged gradually from the sea on their right. Peter Ricci, bare-headed, walked to and fro with Balintore, and Palladis, with a troubled sympathy, talked to Myrtle. For several weeks past, he discovered, she had been trying to read a book called
The Living World of Literature, from Lao-Tsze to Henry James
.

‘Oh no!' he exclaimed. ‘Read books, by all means; but avoid literature at all costs.'

‘It's for Peter's sake,' she said gravely.

‘He won't thank you if he finds Lao-Tsze on your pillow. Or Henry James either.'

They dropped anchor off a rocky point, and went ashore to a small sandy bay where Balintore and Palladis and Ricci swam conservatively in the shallows, while Myrtle in a black suit went, swift as a dolphin, into greater depths and traced the crystal line of her movement on blue water half a mile from shore. They watched her with admiration, and greeted her with respect when she came back to the beach with water-drops pearling her arms.

She smiled happily and said, ‘It's nice to be able to swim without looking over your shoulder for sharks.'

The voracity of sharks off the coasts of New South Wales and Queensland emerged as a topic for conversation, and that, and other of the more vivid or astonishing aspects of Australian life held their attention till a little while after noon; when they rowed out to the yacht again. There they found the after-deck sheltered by its awning, and in its shade a table well furnished with assorted drink. Within a little while conversation reverted to Edinburgh and the boyhood of their host.

Peter Ricci recalled the fine house in Eton Terrace where Balintore had lived: it had roused his envy, in youth, because
across the road from it were hanging gardens, to which householders held keys, that reached down to the Water of Leith. A pleasanter place to live, he had thought, could hardly be imagined. Balintore's father, the Professor, he also remembered with affection, and spoke of his early death with what appeared to be genuine regret.

‘A man of consequence,' he said, ‘and a fine-looking man forbye. My own father held him in high regard. “A scholar and a gentleman, as asset to the whole city,” is what he used to say. Ay, many's the time I've watched the three of you on your way to the Kirk. Up Queensferry Street, on the opposite side to us – we lived above the shop. You remember that? – You'd be going to St John's, at the corner of Princes Street? Just so! And your father in his top-hat glinting in the sun. We must have had fine weather in those days, for that's the way I remember it: always a glimmer of sun on his black silk hat. And never a silk hat have I seen since then, for they're not much worn in Queensland.'

Balintore, muttering under his breath, helped himself to another drink.

‘What did you say?' asked Ricci.

‘I was trying to think of a poem I read somewhere; but I can only remember two lines of it:

'The Cuckoos in my Family Tree

Calculate Heredity'

‘And what's the meaning of that?'

‘He wasn't my father, he was only my adoptive father. You know that as well as I do.'

‘I remember the day you told me, and that was a right surprise! It was almost as big a shock to me as it had been to you. You swore me to secrecy, and I kept it a secret. I never spoke of it from that day to this.'

‘I was only twelve when he died,' said Balintore. ‘I still thought he was my real father, my natural father – and he might well have been, the way I missed him. I used to dream of him. Dream that he was opening my bedroom door and saying, “Hullo, Ned! Sorry I've been away so long.” '